A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Con is On” (aka “The Brits are Coming”) (15).
Bob the Movie Man’s Movie Rating:
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R.
This is a film so extraordinarily awful that both myself and my wife were transfixed – like rabbits in the movie headlights as disaster approached. It’s a film that must surely be near the nadir for 2018 when the reckoning comes. A film so bad that it has two alternative titles, neither of which makes any sense whatsoever: “The Con is On” is 100% inaccurate since a robbery is at the heart of the action rather than a confidence trick; “The Brits are Coming” also makes no sense since the “Brits” in question are “going” from the UK to LA, and noone knows they are “coming”!
Tim Roth plays Peter Fox, a drunken git who is (unbelievably) married to Harriet (Uma Thurman, “Kill Bill”) a gambling addict. When they fritter away the drugs haul of the sociopathic mobster Irina (Maggie Q) the couple flee to Los Angeles where they hatch a plan to rob Peter’s ex-flame Gina (Parker Posey) of a ring worth millions of dollars to settle the debt. Things do not go to plan.
You can just imagine the director James Oakley (changing his name for this one – surely not a good sign – to James Haslam) showing the financiers of this sorry affair the movie for the first time. Heads in hands. Sobbing. Wishing for a time machine.
It’s supposed to be a comedy, but the script by Oakley/Haslam and Alex Michaelides (who worked together on 2013’s Rosamund Pike film “The Devil You Know”, which I’ve not seen and now don’t intend to) is so mutton-headed that there was not a single laugh in it. It is a script that assumes that if you say the “F-word” enough in the dialogue (and in one place the “C-word”) then surely somebody somewhere will find it funny. After all, Richard Curtis did it in the start of “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, and that was HILARIOUS, right?
I’m afraid I’ve never warmed to Tim Roth as an actor, and this has helped my opinion in the negative direction. But the biggest shock is seeing Uma Thurman reduced to this level of dross: it’s akin to the shock of seeing Robert De Nero masturbating in “Dirty Grandpa“, his personal nadir. Man… she must have needed this paycheck. A pivotal scene on an airport escalator at the end of the film can’t even be described as her “dialling it in”: it’s the acting equivalent of reversing the charges!
Elsewhere in the cast Parker Posey staggers around as some sort of nymphomaniac…. I don’t know what… personal assistant? Your guess is as good as mine. Crispin Glover (“Back to the Future”) hams it up in his role as the Hollywood Director, Gabriel Anderson, and Sofía Vergara (“Modern Family”) is rabidly over-the-top as his lustful leading lady (but at least it is a role scripted that way and she doesn’t disgrace herself completely).
The only actor for me that showed an ounce of promise was Alice Eve (Carol Marcus in “Star Trek: Into Darkness“) as Anderson’s wife and owner of the target jewelry at the heart of the plot (“plot” is being used here in its loosest possible sense).
Now, the problem is that you now want to watch it just to see if I’m exaggerating as to how bad it is (I’m not!). If you are in the UK, it’s showing on Now TV at the time of writing, where it – inexplicably – has a Now TV rating of 4* out of 5!
Trailer:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3hucyd-s9U .
It was the worst movie I have ever fast forwarded the entire time on TV because it was so fucking awful. I love Parker Posey to death (House of Yes was magnificent) and she was abominable in this wretched fucking excuse for a movie. The director needs to be executed- THAT would be much more entertaining to watch.
I cannot disagree.