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Norman_Castle
Reviews
A Shock to the System (1990)
Not so great
A fairly mediocre movie. Only Michael Caine's performance rescues it from being truly awful. The original novel by Simon Brett is 100 times superior. I recommend you read it, and you'll see how far the film version falls short of the mark.
The original novel was an entertaining crime thriller. The movie strives to be a black comedy, but misses. The real problem is the ending, or rather the lack of one. In the original novel,I won't spoil it for you, but Graham Marshall gets his well-deserved comeuppance in a supremely ironic fashion. The film version just stops abruptly, with no real denouement or climax. So, we don't get to enjoy seeing his destruction, and because he's such an unsympathetic character, we also don't enjoy seeing him get away with it.
And that "bippity-boppity-boo" stuff is just annoying.