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Simply Perfect

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Good cast. Awful movie. Seems to be a ripoff of a good George Orwell type plot.

May contain plot spoilers, although the film is not plot driven.This is a film heavy in the metaphor and symbolism thing. It lacks plot continuity and events that don't make sense in the civilized world as pointed out by its own characters. The film is about a High-Rise where people are screened to buy condos based on the need of the architect, a man who lives in the luxurious penthouse garden he made for his wife. The lower class live on the bottom. They all pay the same for resources but the resources are allocated to those in the upper levels, a statement about the allocation of the world's resources. Note the supermarket fruit is arranged from pure to moldy on the shelves.Dr. Laing (Tom Hiddleston) is "self contained and detached" from the class or level struggle. Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) is a documentary film maker who is leading an anarchist rebellion against Royal (Jeremy Irons).The setting of the picture is circa late 60's (note the Che poster) although people in higher levels look modern and sleek. People are heavy smokers. The film is filled with telling statements and symbols... "Another prison documentary" The architect is living in the index finger tip of his creation. "The future already taken place." This film is for Indy lovers who question capitalistic values.Guide: F-word, sex, nudity

The most frustrating thing of all about this film is that it starts out with quite a bit of promise. Visually stimulating: interesting and tantalisingly bizarre story and characters - "where will this rabbit hole lead?" you wonder. Well my wife wanted to go to sleep and I was intrigued enough to keep her up on a Sunday night to watch more. As a result I've just been screamed at, I'm apparently spending the night on the sofa and I have specifically registered with IMDb to warn you away from this bubbling pustule of a film. Frankly I'm lucky to be on the sofa - after that decision I'm fortunate not to be face down in a foot-deep bath. It would be more than I deserve.As I mentioned, after about twenty minutes or so the director seems to give up entirely and simply throw this film into the pinball machine of art-house cliché, and what a score he achieves. In particular; slow motion violence coupled with classical music. I have more than a sneaking suspicion that the director is a big fan of "A Clockwork Orange" and especially the scenes of shockingly base violence coupled with classical music. If your favourite thing in the whole world is the sight of violence in slow motion backed by classical music then this is your lucky day - you are going to be in ecstacy watching this film. Sadly no-one ever seems to have explained to the director that watching violence is like watching porn; thrilling for the first ten minutes, boring for the next five minutes, before settling in to a depressing soul-crushing grind for all time thereafter.Every character is eminently unlikeable (whichever "side" you pick, both display shocking cruelty to animals, which for me is a massive red line), the story is exceptionally weak - the premise on which society "breaks down" is utterly pathetic. The whole trick of art- house film is to be able to create surreal metaphors which are cleverly interpreted observations on real life; this film can add itself to the list of wannabe art-house, simply scattering meaningless surreal imagery around with apparently no meaning or significance whatsoever. If you ever find yourself talking to the director and he mentions that he is planning on making another film, please do us all a favour and suggest that he find the nearest 40- storey high-rise block and throw himself off of the top of it.

The question intriguing me after watching High Rise wasn't whether it had sufficiently excoriated the class system, as the writer and director seem to have hoped it would, but whether they had understood Ballard's remarkable book at all. Clumsily, almost as an afterthought, the film closes (and it's not a spoiler to say this) with a cheap political shot against 'capitalism'. How very 'Spitting Image'. But Ballard was better and smarter than that. The societal collapse he was describing was just as much a feature of socialist, fascist or communist societies. His Swiftian vision of mankind wasn't restricted to the fashionable political fetishes of the day but to man himself. An even greater irony is that the failure of the High Rise project stems from the fact that it was a planned project at all - which hardly bangs the drum for the sort of social re-engineering, statism and enforced egalitarianism the film makers seem to be suggesting would be preferable. Indeed, the supermarket stocked with nothing but unbranded products called to mind the Soviet Union rather more than Walmart, and it is strange that the director didn't realise this.It's hard to ignore the heavy-handed sixth form political wallpaper but even if one can, the film is still a weak average. Tom Hiddleston is as detached and android like as Ballard's Laing has to be, though one wonders if he has anything else to him as this does appear to be his stock in trade performance, but the rest of the cast hams and camps it up adequately. The orgies, however, get as tiring and passionless for the viewer as they must have been for the participants, and even the choreographed violence lacks any of the dangerously seductive grace of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange - they are simply unpleasant but not even shocking.It is hard to make a film suggesting a dystopian future by setting it in a past which, clearly, those who made it were too young to have experienced. On balance, I wish they had left it someone else.