Sunday, January 6, 2013

Dogboys

Ken Russell – 1998 – USA

Easily the worst of all the Ken Russell films I’ve ever seen.  It’s so bad that it doesn’t even seem to have been directed by Russell; his signature is nowhere to be found.  In fact, it barely seems to have been directed by anyone at all.  The shots and cuts are totally pedestrian, even below the level of rudimentary TV-shooting and editing practices.  In this fairly shameless rip-off of the basic Cool Hand Luke scenario, Dean Cain plays a convict subjected to the abuses of the cruel warden (Bryan Brown) of a prison-camp in the American south.  It’s really bad.  I have no idea why Russell, of all people, would be asked to direct it or why he agreed to do it.  At first I suspected that this Russell was merely another man with the same name, but the film appears in all his filmographies and is even mentioned in his biography.

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