User reviews

Joan Plowright pitches her Meg very nicely with perfect mix of ignorance, flirtation, and maternal manipulation. Cast includes a very creepy McCann by Colin Blakely and a young Julie Walters with a eerie resemblance to Samantha Morton. Regretfully the only slightly miscasting is Mr Pinter himself who's accent is all over the map. Interestingly his Goldberg is dressed in typical Pinter fashion ( blue blazer and cravat), as if he wants us to be conscientiously aware of his duel presences. As a time capsule it's really wonderful to see the master working within his own words even though he's never totally convincing as the menace he's called to be.

Production is nicely directed without feeling too theatrical, highlighting the kitchen sink aesthetic with excellent lighting and superb TV editing. Especially like the camera's subtly lower perspective

Pinter's masterpiece translates well to the screen in this adaptation overseen by (and featuring) Pinter himself. Wonderfully acted, unforgettable, unforgiving and shockingly frank, this is a work that cannot be ignored.

Most critics didn't understand this play when it was first put on, and it's actually not fair to blame them: nothing like it had appeared on stage before. Pinter's understanding of how people talk and don't listen to each other is unique: no amount of bad imitators can detract from his achievement. The cast are all fine, but Pinter and Blakely stand out, though Kenneth Cranham with his vest under his pyjamas is a memorable sight as well. High time this was out on video.

Goldberg and McCann, working for the mysterious Monty, can be seen as representatives of evil repressive regimes everywhere, but they're not just symbolic figures: they're credible people: the brutal but occasionally maudlin McCann and the seemingly friendly Goldberg, full of talk of loyalty and family, yet, in his treatment of Lulu, utterly callous. They act the way powerful people everywhere act, hence the play's resonance.

You have not understood life properly until you have added this film to your psyche.

Pinter I plan to dig you up and put you in my living room, you sir are a God. It is amazing that this work has not been recognised as one of the finest pieces of acting and writing ever achieved on-screen.

All of the characters are excellently cast, and with Pinter himself at the helm it is perfection. McCann (Colin Blakely) is the devil and Goldberg (Pinter) is the messanger, the angel and the mercy he is all-inspiring and all-receding to the point of making sense.

My greatest film of all time, knocking "Napoleon" (Abel Gance) off the top-spot. Why did you have to die?!?!?! Gives me something to look forward to when I die

Harold Pinter is behind this pointless, pretentious, vastly overrated critics'-darling drivel. Like almost everything else this deluded Marxist (hence unsurprisingly a Milosevic and Saddam Hussein fan) ever wrote, there is dull monologue aplenty, characters that like to foam at the mouth i.e. get angry and loud for no sufficient reason, and no plot to speak of. To defend this kind of easy-to-write, almost stream-of-consciousness malarkey as being "character-driven drama" is the ultimate escape from reality that any severely and incurably denial-stricken sheep will resort to, just in order to defend their left-wing brother-in-arms. The typically confining Pinterian setting doesn't help either. If you're even slightly claustrophobic, you might find yourself feeling restless mere minutes into this dozy garbage.

This almost randomly put-together junk was meant to be a play hence it should have stayed a play. There is a reason why certain (one-dimensional) plays are performed in empty little theaters and not on the big screen - until, of course, some highly optimistic producer decides to boost both his ego and career by raking in an award or two for trying to spread the gospel of yet another useless anti-Western playwright by stretching his/her unintellectual crap all over the far-too-large canvas. Not only is BP minimalistic in its sets, but in its confused ideas, as well. Pinter was an undisciplined charlatan, and the fact that he won a Nobel Prize only underlines his worthlessness. Predictably enough, he used the occasion to "show off" his ignorance and stupidity by making the kind of Marxist speech that had the Nobel Prize jury wetting themselves with delight.

What a sad, sad day this was... Such a great loss to the world of bad movies and ridiculously overrated Leftist writers...