Customer Reviews

Shadow Run

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"Shadow Run" isn't a great crime film on the order of "Get Carter" or "The Long Good Friday," but it is an enjoyable enough tale of a heist gone wrong. The great pleasure of the film is, of course, Michael Caine, one of the few actors who can be equally effective as good guy or bad. Here, he plays Haskell, a very bad man who's teamed up with an even badder man to loot a vanload of banknote paper. What could have been a "by-the-numbers" shoot-em-up is helped immeasurably by a sub-plot involving the nastiness that goes on in a British public school. The school and robbery subplots converge in a satisfying way, and no one can purr out a terrifying threat better than Sir Michael.

I am a great admirer of the work of British actors, James Fox and Caine.
Michael Caine had appeared in a great many movies which he should have thought twice about before signing the contract.This is one of those movies.
Caine does his old Cockney ganster bit which he developed in the original version of the ITALIAN JOB.In this one he turns ruthless,rather like a simular character he played in the classic British ganster film, MONA LISA. But it's just not working well here for him.

In additon to the grand heist theme of the movie, there's a poorly developed sub-plot concerning a nerdy English public school boy, who finds out about the heist and keeps encountering the plotters.

One of my favorite British actors, James Fox, is also wasting his time here as a corrupt Upper Class civil servant( roles which he plays so well).
Fox who started his career as a child actor ,has been making movies for over 50 years.He like Michael Caine, has made some very good one and some rather bad ones, this film being one of the latter.

The poorly written script stretches credulity to limit and there is far too much gratuitous violence to be justtified by the story .

I found the movie over all to be very disappointing.

Upfront, I'll admit that I've only watched about half this movie (till the mock trial of the schoolgirl) until I shut it off. There are two story lines running throughout the film, one having to do with a planned heist of a van carrying special blank paper from the government mint used in currency production, and the other involving a social outcast boy at a private school. The storylines have almost nothing to do with each other (at least till the half way point where I stopped) and the child acting is bad.

I usually love espionage and gangster movies, but I would not recommend this film to others.