The Riddle (2008) [2007] [DVD]

This is a car crash of a film. You know you shouldn't watch, but it has a morbid fascination. Let's state the obvious - it's rubbish pure and simple. The screenplay seems to have been written by the proverbial monkeys on the typewriters, and the cast is largley more wooden than the New Forest. The only actor to put on a performance is Derek Jacobi, but he can't make a silk purse out of this sow's ear. It's easy to pick on Vinnie Jones, but there are a whole host of other proper actors fumbling around as well, including names like Vanessa Redgrave and Mel Smith who frankly should know better. Anyway, you get the picture it's bad. I didn't turn it off mind. It's not making you angry in a foot through the screen way. And it stops way short of being so bad it's good. But you do keep watching in total bemusement that anything like this could ever have attracted investment, and surely it must improve in a minute shouldn't it? It doesn't by the way. There was also a trailer of another Jones vehicle by the same director that looks even worse (Bog People) so make a mental note to avoid that one too.

The growth of tax funds and sale-and-leaseback schemes has led to a raft of unsaleable films that are gathering dust in laboratories and vaults all over the British Isles because they seem to be made purely because they fit the financial criteria rather than had any potential audience. A lucky few get a week at a small screen in London before going to budget DVD, but The Riddle distinguished itself by completely bypassing cinema, TV or even the rental market to premiere as a free gift DVD in the Mail on Sunday. It's all too easy to see why this ended up being literally given away. Aside from a couple of glitches (a boom mike is clearly visible in one shot) it's not particularly badly made, and while Vinnie Jones comes over like modern British cinema's version of 50s boxer Freddie Mills as the greyhound reporter who wants to move up to the crime desk and the supporting cast veer from ham to vaguely passable, nobody's distinguishing themselves here by being either outstandingly good or outstandingly bad: mediocrity is the norm here. The real problem is that like so many sale-and-leaseback tax fund films, it's a 'soft' film - there's no reason to watch it. It exists because the circumstances existed for it to be made, but it lacks pace or forward momentum. It seems to be aiming for the Sunday teatime telly audience (despite being shot in Scope) but doesn't cut it. There are a couple of okayish ideas in this determinedly inoffensive tale of a unpublished Charles Dickens manuscript and a couple of suspicious deaths in modern-day Limehouse, but the mystery element is so painfully obvious - as is the last-minute supernatural twist (you'll never guess who Jacobi's literate tramp really is. What, you guessed?) - that you're almost expecting the Scooby Gang or the Double Deckers to turn up to solve it.

It's a very misconceived film for all kinds of reasons: a few cast members are playing double roles when they shouldn't even be playing one, and the whole shock reveal of the truth of the Dickens manuscript is completely bungled because it's all narrated in the first person by Dickens rather than the supposed character of the novel. The main murder in the film is clumsily integrated into the main plot, with characters suddenly reminding Vinnie that he's forgotten about that one already, heralding an increasingly desperate final half hour that sees wicked developer Jason Flemyng's secretary putting some Rohypnol in Vinnie's drink so she can have her wicked way with him and leave incriminating photos behind "to make you look a git with your girlfriend," leading to him having a dream where he talks to Charles Dickens ("You're Charles Dickings." "What's in a name?"), who offers the somewhat less than likely suggestion that "You read too many books." But then Vinnie is prone to carry the priceless Dickens' manuscript around in his pocket to the pub or riverside as if it were a dog-eared Tote guide, so he might have a point after all...

But all that's as nothing compared to the finale, which falls into utter absurdity, with logic and common sense going completely out the window as it plays like some bizarre Jacobean revenge tragedy with handguns on the banks of the Thames, with two-day guest stars Flemyng and Vanessa Redgrave looking like they'd much rather be somewhere else (Mel Smith turns up in a one-day cameo, so it's clear that the film's 'names' are mainly there for an easy $10k or to meet their alimony payments). The film's final image is so utterly absurd and pointless as to almost make it worth watching, though. One curiosity is a fairly prominent role in the first third for Vera Day, a sort of prototype Liz Fraser and one-time mainstay of 50s British films - the barmaid in Hell Drivers, the barmaid in Quatermass II - here promoted to pub owner, while standup comedian Kenny Lynch turns up briefly to give the best performance as an old school gangster. Oh, and the late New Avenger Gareth Hunt makes his final bow as - oh the irony - a coroner...

...watching this film. Despite the presence of a good cast (Derek Jacobi, Vanessa Redgrave etc) this is truly dire. It sounds interesting from the synopsis but it's woefully written and just tries to cash in on the whole 'DaVinci Code' industry. It's such shame that no-one involved thought to do a little quality control.