Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Martin Bradley Michael Caine made "A Shock to the System" in 1990 and I must have blinked and missed it, (me and a lot of others). He's Graham Marshall, a corporate businessman who is passed over for promotion in favour of his hot-shot subordinate Peter Riegert. Naturally, he doesn't take this too well. In fact, he feels that he's cursed in some way and he really should do something about it. As it turns out, "A Shock to the System" is a deliciously funny and dark comedy about a man who will go to any lengths, including murder, if it means getting ahead and Caine is terrific, (it's actually one of his best performances), and he's backed by an equally terrific supporting cast. Riegert is superbly slimy as Caine's new boss; then there's Elizabeth McGovern as the colleague who takes a shine to him, Swoosie Kurtz as his social-climbing wife, John McMartin as the out-going head of department and Will Patton as a very inquisitive cop. The director was Jon Egelson who doesn't revert to any tricks to tell his tale but rather relies on the quality of his material and his cast and it and they don't let him down.

blanche-2 Michael Caine receives "A Shock to the System" in this 1990 black comedy also starring Swoosie Kurtz, Elizabeth McGovern, John McMartin, Will Patton, and Peter Riegert. Caine plays Graham Marshall, a New York ad exec on the verge of getting a huge new promotion as the company changes hands. Alas, the promotion goes to a younger man, Robert Benham (Peter Riegert). Frustrated and miserable, as Graham waits for the subway, he gets into a fight with a beggar and pushes the man, who lands on the tracks as the train arrives.When Graham realizes that he probably committed murder and doesn't feel any different, he finds that murder is a great solution to some of his more vexing problems and starts dispensing with people one by one by various means. Then his involvement with a young woman (Elizabeth McGovern) leads to danger.This is the blackest of comedies with a great performance by Michael Caine who manages to seem very likable throughout. Caine plays the role very seriously, as he should, and lets the humor come out in his actions. Peter Riegert as the new boss is someone you'd like to slap silly, and Swoosie Kurtz does a fine job playing Graham's annoying wife.Recommended.

bob_meg I'd love to know if the part of Graham, the droll-voiced, rage-repressed Brit, confined to a suburban Connecticut prison and a Madison Avenue job he secretly loathes, was written especially for Michael Caine. It really could have been, and not because he does such a fine job with it.No, "A Shock To The System" is really a much more British-type thriller than an American one. It is extremely dark, remorseless in its cold-hearted execution of moral-less morals and it laughs in our face at every confounding expectation.Graham is all about pent-up anger and we love him for that. When the promotion he has been banking on for several years falls through the cracks to land in the lap of a sycophantic, smarmy Yuppie (played smoothly by the effortless Peter Riegert, looking very young here), he decides he's had enough, and concocts a fiendish scheme that's so brilliant and manipulative, it just might work.Another reason why this film strikes me as so un-American is that it is really all about the suspense, not the pay-offs. It keeps a deliciously taut tension throughout that's so well executed, you really forget there are few really jarring moments (save one, that makes the entire picture worth watching).And not just Caine is well cast. Liz McGovern has her long-overdue leading-lady performance and bags it effortlessly. Similar strong support to Swoosie Kurtz who plays Graham's ditsy but demanding wife with such bubble-headed ease that its difficult to hate her; Jenny Wright, who always brings a nicely fresh ingénue quality to whatever role she plays; Will Patton, whose stern, no-BS attitude makes him a formidable adversary to Graham's misdeeds; but most of all to John McMartin, whose portrait of a virtuous but increasingly apathetic executive will ring bells in many people's heads and hearts.The ending is a bit of a cheat, but you'll live. The movie as a whole will resonate as clearly as Gary Chang's wonderfully pensive score, rendered flawlessly by the Turtle Island String Quartet.

Norman_Castle 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.