Watch White Mischief For Free

You won't be disappointed!

Best movie ever!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Charles Dance plays the greedy, suave, lying cad. He's a marvelous actor. His features are handsome in an oddly distant way and his hooded eyes are the color of that watery blue you can sometimes see deep in the interior of glaciers. God, is he rotten. He was rotten in "China Moon," too, but in the less demanding part of a drunken wife beater in a trashy movie.The point of the story is made clear in the first few minutes. It's 1940 and London is being bombed. After a roll in the hay, rich Greta Scacchi and her paramour, rich Hugh Grant, must take shelter in the underground, and they are two lovely, fashionably groomed people, amid the sweaty crowd of mothers and children. The milieu doesn't stop them from making out. The simply ignore the misery around them.Scacchi is married to Joss Ackland, older, rich, and satisfied with only looking at his wife when she's naked. (She's magnificent, with or without clothes.) But he's in financial trouble. His vast country estate is in jeopardy and he takes his wife to Kenya to see to his far-flung cattle empire.Kenya, they find, is loaded with other rich white Englanders who pride themselves on the produce they ship to England during the time of her troubles. The fact that their patriotism enables them to take baths in pound notes doesn't occur to them.What does occur to them is to get laid as frequently as possible and with diverse partners. Charles Dance, the cad, quickly seduces the stunning Scacchi and they exchange vows of love. Everyone in "the colony" knows all about it. Dance does everything but roger her on the pool table at noon. But does Dance really mean it? He's been married twice before, both times to rich women, and shrugged them off. Now he seems intent on winning Scacchi and her substantial divorce agreement away from Ackland. Ackland, now humiliated and feeling Scacchi's increasing estrangement, hints that maybe he won't honor the pre-nup that assured her of a lifetime income. Clouds of antipathy darken the savannah. The cattle grow restless.If Dance is a suave cad, we can't be sure about Scacchi either. As they lie in bed, planning to run off together, she says, "But we haven't any money." "Well, there's my Army salary." And she turns from him to flick ashes from her cigarette and replies, "Yes," in the most unenthusiastic tones ever committed to celluloid.The photography, wardrobe, and make up are unimpeachable. It's a story about Africa that takes place more than seventy years ago and there isn't a lion in it. (We get a glimpse of someone's pet leopard.) No elephants. No native uprisings. Only a colony of rich dissolutes in the foreground and impassive black Africans serving drinks and holding spears, while someone goes mad and an empire dies.

Even with the rather unimaginative script and lacklustre direction, WHITE MISCHIEF comes across as a good movie, largely because of the times and the place. But I cannot help feeling that a great opportunity was missed here to make a really memorable period piece considering the plot and setting. The fantastic location of Kenya's 'Happy Valley', the hedonistic lifestyle of the White settlers in the face of the war in Europe, the love triangle that led to Lord Erroll's murder and the subsequent dead-end investigation - all cried out for a more inspirational handling than the rather insipid effort by Michael Radford who both wrote the script and directed the film. Even Roger Deakins' cinematography was nothing to shout about.Still, the film does manage to make something of a mark, thanks largely to great performances by Joss Ackland, Sara Miles and to some extent, Greta Scacchi. I debated for a while whether or not to buy the DVD and on balance decided that it was a worthwhile investment.

Michael Radford directed and co-wrote this adaptation of James Fox's book taking place in Kenya during World War II. High society Brits evade the swarming Nazis by hiding out in Africa while money-hungry Greta Scacchi gets caught up in heated love-triangle. Languid, slowly-paced British-made drama without enough inner-fire; the handling is awfully sullen, and clichés abound, despite attractive locales and sexy Greta spicing the scenario. Terrific supporting cast includes John Hurt, Hugh Grant, and Geraldine Chaplin, yet they can't do much to infuse the film with life. Radford does pull off an amazing finale however, and his final shot is haunting. ** from ****

It's funny how you remember certain details with regards to certain films. I'll always remember that "Gremlins 2" was the first movie I taped on my VCR machine and that this was the first movie that I watched on my personal TV in my room. The reason being, I had not long turned 13 and the listings described this as an "erotic thriller". Now, it looks about as erotic as an episode of "Songs of Praise"."White Mischief" takes us to Kenya in the early days of WWII. A rich landowner and his young wife (Joss Acklund and Greta Scacchi) arrive to escape the Blitz and settle in a colony of affluent, upper class aristocrats. However, she soon falls in love with the dashing Earl of Erroll (Charles Dance), causing a scandal in the community. Things come to a tragic head, however, when the Earl is murdered. Anything beyond that, I can't really tell you because this film moves so slowly and so little seems to happen that other details just seemed to vanish in a hazy blur.Credit where it's due, the production values are fantastic. Like most BBC period productions, the costumes are spot-on and the unusual setting is completely believable on screen. Locations, music, dialogue etc. are all as you'd expect, although Scacchi's character occasionally looks like a 1950's Hollywood starlet, rather than a 1940's Lady. Nothing wrong with the performances either, though with a cast like this, a dodgy performance was probably the last thing you'd expect. The fatal flaw, in my eyes, is that most viewers will not have any chance of identifying themselves with the characters. It feels like a dramatised version of a Mills & Boon novel and the feeling of detachment is unsettling. The other flaw is that it runs so slow. By the time of the trial into the death of the Earl of whatever-it-was, the film had failed my Nokia test - only it hadn't technically. Instead of playing Backgammon on my mobile (battery was dead), I flicked over to watch Jennifer Love Hewitt take a shower in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". And quite frankly, no part of this film can compete with that.If you're interested in the period then you might take something from this. Otherwise, I can't see why it was ever released as a film. It might have been better as one of those Sunday evenings shows that the BBC like so much like "Ballykissangel" or "Monarch Of The Glen" (shudders). Editing would have removed some the (rather pointless) tit shots and apart from this, this is precisely the sort of bland, middle-of-the-road, inoffensive twaddle that seems to occupy that slot in the listings. Sorry but the only mischievous thing about this film is the title, implying that the whole film is little more than a trifle inconvenience in the lives of the characters and a trifle boring for the viewer.