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The Worst Film Ever

best movie i've ever seen.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Watchable but somehow unmemorable suspense thriller from a major British director. The plot, cleverly written by John Mortimer, has some quite subtle twists and turns; the acting good. Laurence Harvey as a dislikeable insurance fraudster, Lee Merick is particularly fetchi9ng as his increasingly uncertain wife, Alan Bates gives his usual sensitive performance as investigator who might be on to them, all convince. But Carol Reed (director of such classics as The third Man, Odd Man Out, Oliver) never manages to give it quite enough urgency or edge. It all comes across as something of a pot-boiler in his career. The scenery in Spain and Gibraltar is atmospheric, but it's one of those films that relies just a bit too heavily on pleasing sunny locations.

I was really enjoying this at first. The first fifteen or twenty minutes seemed a good set-up for a premise that sounds exciting and suspenseful. Then suddenly Laurence Harvey is walking around with dyed blonde hair and a terrible Aussie accent and the film derails itself from there. Literally nothing happens for over half an hour. Just characters going to dinner with each other and talking a lot about nothing. Carol Reed was a great director who has done much better but his attempts at building suspense between the insurance agent and the couple fell flat, in my opinion. I've seen a few reviews that referred to this as a "great cat and mouse thriller." Personally I think this is very misleading as it implies this is a movie full of action and intrigue when there's very little of either.The actors are fine, for the most part. Harvey's fake Australian accent is terrible and he tends to overact more than under. Alan Bates is good for a rather dull part. Lee Remick is beautiful and does OK with the material but her character makes choices we have to make guesses as to the reasoning behind and that sort of thing always bugs me. Anyway, check it out if you come across it. Your opinion might be more favorable than mine. It's not a bad film, just not a particularly good one.

Had "The Running Man" not been a Carol Reed film, I might have enjoyed it more. One has a certain expectation that goes with a name. Here, however, the result is disappointing.Lee Remick plays Stella Black, a widow who isn't one. Her husband Rex (Laurence Harvey), angry that his insurance company didn't pay a claim for 20,000 pounds, decides to get back at them by playing dead. As his widow, Stella is due to collect a good deal of money. The couple makes a plan to meet in Spain after she gets the settlement.When Stella arrives, Rex is now blond and an Australian named Jim Jerome, and he's totally into the subterfuge. Stella feels somehow unable to connect with him. Then she's spotted by the insurance agent (Alan Bates) who questioned her after Rex's "death." Both she and Rex are convinced that he's after them - he writes in a little book, seems suspicious of Rex, and asks a lot of questions. Then Stella realizes that Rex is also planning on killing off Jim Jerome - and she panics.The scenery in the film is stunning, and the acting by this fine cast is very good, though the only truly strong role belonged to Laurence Harvey. I don't agree with one of the other comments - I didn't find him particularly likable. The Bates character is much more likable. Rex doesn't have much regard for what Stella wants or needs.As far as any plot twist, some of this film was fairly predictable.All in all, for this writer, the film seemed remote and didn't draw me in.

About as bad as any British movie can ever get -- and that's saying something -- 'The Running Man' is a 1933 opus with the wrong production date attached.Formulaic, pedestrian, and so Britishly twee, it's also notable for the screen's first display of acute anorexia (when Harvey strips off to go swimming in the sea.)But there is a reason to go to the trouble of seeing this movie, and it's this: 'The Running Man' is a perfect illustration of why the vogue for attributing everything in a movie to the director is, was, and always will be fallacious (blame the French: they're responsible for starting it all).Reed demonstrated his brilliance -- or so we are led to believe -- with The Third Man. Here, he demonstrates what an utter klutz he could be behind the camera.The fact is, when you have a superb Director of Photography, brilliant script, Grade A actors and a wonderful music score (as in The Third Man) then chances are, the film will a success.When you have none of that, and only the director to fall back on, chances are the film will be 'The Running Man'.Another IMDb entry meriting minus 10 out of 10, but for scoring purposes, an overly generous. . . 1.