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Too much of everything

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I once heard a saying that all happy families are the same but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. While not all good movies are the same, it's certainly true that bad movies come in an almost infinite number of varieties. Quicksand would be a particular sort of terrible film known as the "Movie Star Vacation Project". It's where not-all-that-talented people manage to get the money to produce their horrible script solely because one or more genuine movie stars agrees to act in it, but the stars only agree to do it because the film is being shot in a certain location where the star would like to hang out for a couple of months. They don't give a damn whether the movie is any good or not, they just look at it as a paid vacation.Martin Raikes (Michael Keaton) is a bank examiner who goes to the south of France to check on an allegation of improper financial behavior at a movie studio. Once there, he meets Lela Forin (Judith Godreche), unaware that she's the frontwoman for a Russian mobster named Oleg (Rade Sherbedgia). It turns out Oleg is using the movie studio as a way to launder money, something which Raikes doesn't appear at all close to discovering but Oleg decides to frame him for the murder of a French police official anyway. Raikes has to flee the authorities and become a crime-stopping detective to uncover what's happened to him, something he takes to like a duck to water. Eventually he and Lela team up with Jake Mallows (Michael Caine), an aging British movie star who Oleg has hired to make a pretend film as part of the movie studio facade. There's also this bit about the Russians using the phony French studio to make rape videos and Raike's daughter gets kidnapped and there's this weird subplot back in the U.S. involving Raike's smartass and very pregnant secretary Beth Ann (Kathleen Wilhoite), which seems to exist just to make Quicksand about 15 minutes longer.The first hour of Quicksand is pretty boring and lame. The highlight of it is largely Raikes being chased by French police through a tunnel. Yeah, that's the best moment. Raikes grabs a handy shovel and uses it to knock out some lights, which somehow causes the police to lose track of him even though the tunnel remains brightly lit at all times. Even for a melodrama where it's more about running and shouting and blowing stuff up than making any sense, the lack of any sort of realistic behavior or action is quite apparent. This is supposed to be one of those stories about an ordinary guy ripped out of his ordinary life and his desperate struggle to escape from the foreign "quicksand" into which he's plunged. But while these filmmakers have clearly watched those sorts of movies, they clearly don't understand how to tell that story themselves. This is like one of those bad episodes from the later seasons of Miami Vice, with an extra 30 minutes tacked on. Yeah, it's that terrible.The last half hour of this film, however, is more than just boring and lame. It descends into a bizarre and apparently unintentional parody. At least it's unintentional for the filmmakers. There's a point where you can tell Michael Keaton has figured out just how much this movie sucks and decides to see how far he can push the suck. It's not that he phones in his performance, but he doesn't bother to try and salvage anything decent of this mess. He just goes full bore, almost as though he wants to deliberately emphasize how silly and simplistic the story becomes. That's unlike Michael Caine, who does the same professional job and takes the story as seriously as he does anything else.There's no way Keaton and Caine were paid a lot of money to do this film and even though Caine is a old-school actor who'll take almost any job offered to him, you know the only reason they're in this is because when they weren't on set, they could lounge around Europe on the producer's dime. That's a pretty sweet deal for them. It's fairly sour for those of us unlucky enough to watch Quicksand.

'Quicksand' was showing this evening on CH 5, Now I'm always very wary of watching movies on that particular channel as it has become synonymous with terrible films, but I decided to watch purely on it's starring actors, in this case being Michael Caine & Michael Keaton, It's not a terrible film by any means, but it's just so mediocre, it's the kind of Film that even Steven Segal himself would probably turn down.Michael Keaton plays a New York Banker who travels to the South of France to investigate possible fraud on the Film that his company is financing, and soon finds himself up to his next in dirty cops & Russian gangsters and ends up getting framed for murder....YAWN!!!!Been there, done it, got the t-shirt! there is nothing in this film which hasn't been done better before.Michael Caine is really slumming it here, like he has done many times before..... JAWS IV: THE REVENGE or THE SWARM anyone?.... and makes what could be described as a glorified cameo.The Original 'Batman' Keaton pretty much disappeared after picking ghastly Movies to appear in, in the mid/late 90's, but really this is below him, Caine is merely cashing the check.apparently this was filmed in 2001 and not released for nearly 3 years...that tells you just about everything.as I've said above for a Film that never saw the inside of a Movie Theater it's not terrible, and watchable on TV on a Winter's night, but don't spend any money, it's not even worth the rental.**1/2 out of *****

First of all I have to admit I was a little misled by the title of the movie. I saw the title "Quicksand" and immediately thought it was a cheap horror film. This is a reasonable mistake to make. I feel films with such titles should include an explanatory note or a picture of a mutated monster if relevant to the story (most of the time this is the case), in order to establish their true nature. Quicksand is a surprisingly good thriller.Quicksand stars Michael Keaton, Michael Caine and the professor guy who dies at the start of Mission Impossible 2. Keaton plays Martin Raikes; a dedicated Compliance Officer with a New York bank who investigates unusual activity with bank funds. An anomaly is identified with the bank account connected to a film studio in France. It becomes clear that Russian gangsters are using the facility to launder money. As soon as Raikes becomes a difficulty the Russians set him up for the murder of a French cop.Caine takes on the role of Jake Mellows, a washed up actor with a serious gambling problem who is hired by the Russians to front a bogus action movie called Quicksand in order to launder the money. When Mellows is made aware of the fake film and Raikes discovers his daughter has been kidnapped, they must work together to bring down the Russian criminals.The story is fairly simple and quite entertaining. The French backdrop is stunning at times and the acting isn't too bad.It's mostly Keaton, acting as Keaton usually does (technically known as Keatonism) for most part of the film. The legend Caine turns up in the latter stages and in typical fashion steals the show. The Mission Impossible 2 professor doesn't really do much but a good choice for the head Russian gangster.Quicksand had some highlights. The fight between Caine and Keaton was quite funny and Keaton's daughter has a creepy English accent. They're not really highlights are they? Oh well, it kept me amused. Quicksand is by no means a great thriller, in fact there was no real action to speak of, but it's intriguing and the performances of Keaton and Caine make it worthwhile.

It's not that good, but not too bad either. It's nice if you love France but are not there. If you're looking for a thriller, look elsewhere. The characters are rather flat, like cardboard cut outs. The plot is predictable and surreal, if not totally unreal. And, the chemistry between the characters are dry. Like between Keaton's character and the lead actress - you almost hope there's nothing going on between them because it'd be too predictable, but at the same time, you don't have the chance to hope so because it seems like there's no spark at all between them. It's rather hard too to tell who's who for each other unless you listen to their dialogue. Just too bad I missed the blinking corpse part - I didn't watch from the beginning! To be fair, it kept me watching until the end, and it's rather amusing to watch the predictable flow.