Another that I’d been looking forward to for a long time – in this case, I’m pretty sure damn near a year since it was announced? But here the disappointment was even more tremendous. This looked so great as the trailer and clips started coming out … and I can’t believe that I’m saying this but to me it seems it all comes down to Harold Pinter’s adaptation. It feels so much like somebody felt that the play had to be really adapted for the screen, that it had to be made cinematic etc. This would’ve been fine had it not been done before, and proven then that there was no need – the more theatrical the 1972 movie gets, the more fun it is.

Caine and Law are both fine as expected, though neither approach their best work so even to suggest it’s worth watching “just for them” would be misleading. The production design, all that slick blue, was one of the many things that looked wonderful in the trailers but even over the brief 90 minute running time it gets a little tired. The whole thing is just so drab – there’s but one spark of the original’s merriment when Law rips off his disguise, his hair straggled out, I’m sure deliberately to resemble Caine in the same moment of the original. If you’ve not seen the original yet and are considering this, spare yourself the extra time and do yourself a favour by going straight to the classic.