Product Details

• Actors: Damian Lewis, Jodhi May, Robert Lindsay, Patrick Malahide, Eddie Marsan
• Directors: Stephen Poliakoff
• Writers: Stephen Poliakoff
• Producers: Stephen Poliakoff, David M. Thompson, Helen Flint, Nicolas Brown, Peter Fincham
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Unknown)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Warner
• DVD Release Date: May 30, 2006
• Run Time: 109 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000EHQU1C
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #21,213 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The vertigo-inducing ups and downs of the 1980s and '90s business world is cunningly intertwined with an unusual romance in Friends and Crocodiles, an intriguing tv-movie from BBC auteur Stephen Poliakoff. Paul (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers), a wealthy developer, hires Lizzie (Jodhi May, The Turn of the Screw) on a whim to be his secretary--and then, after she helps him marshal his wide-ranging ideas into a shape that could be put into action, drives her away with his self-destructive need for chaos. But over the next couple of decades, as their careers rise and fall, their paths keep crossing. Each has something the other needs to truly do great things, but their contrasting temperaments make collaboration almost impossible. This description may sound dry, but the movie isn't; writer/director Poliakoff and his cast have crafted vivid, believable characters thrust into tense, often visually spectacular circumstances--the parties on Paul's estate will inspire both envy and disgust, while scenes from the venture capitalist world are almost unnerving as they capture the foolhardy confidence of businesspeople feeling their way in the dark. The push and pull of Paul and Lizzie's relationship will feel strikingly familiar to anyone who's had an intense work relationship, a romance not of the flesh or even the mind, but of the will to achieve. A fascinating fable of imagination and discipline. --Bret Fetzer

Product Description
Paul Reynolds is a Gatsby like figure: owner of a magnificent house, a host of grand parties, and a collector of interesting people. He persuades Lizzie Thomas, a secretary in a local estate agent to come and work for him as his assistant, to bring some order to his chaos. He inspires her with his enthusiasm and imagination, and frustrates her with his apparent carelessness and destructiveness, which culminates in her calling the police as a great party is turned over by local troublemakers, seemingly with Paul's tacit approval. But their paths are destined to cross again and again as Lizzie, with the help of some of those she met at Paul's house, rises through the changing landscape of corporate Britain. This is a story of a meaningful and powerful relationship, about those rare people who profoundly influence and shape our lives.

DVD Features:
Interviews:Interviews with Stephen Poliakoff, Damian Lewis and Jodhi May. Commentary from Stephen Poliakoff & Jodhi May.
Other:Behind-the-scenes film

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Makes A Working Relationship Successful?, February 13, 2009

By	R. Crane (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

Poliakoff's films are known for focusing on a slice of British life at a point in time. In "Gideon's Daughter" he captured the emptiness of celebrity culture, when it had reached unheard of heights after Princess Diana's death. In "Almost Strangers", the topic was family relationships, and the obsession with genealogy--digging to discover famous relations. In "Friends and Crocodiles" Poliakoff explores wprk relationships and how British industry and work practices have changed over the past 30 years. As he states, we spend the vast majority of our lives at work. Men and women develop work relationships that are almost like marriages, but lack the love connection.

"Friends and Crocodiles" is an interesting portrayal of such a relationship: A brilliant but non-conformist, wealthy, Gatsby-like figure, Paul, is able to identify areas of future economic growth, but is too disorganized and flawed to bring them to fruition. He hires a personal assistant who is gifted in organization and ability, but the two are unable to function together. "Crocodiles" refers to one of Paul's ideas, that there is something innate within crocodiles that must hold the secret to life. It is the only species to have survived intact from the time of the dinosaurs and has the ability to self-heal wounds.

Ironically, though Poliakoff pokes fun at venture capitalists and their ideas for making money, in fact in the film, what might have looked absurd 8 years ago when the film was probably written, today is actually happening, e.g. electronic book readers (Kindle), windmill energy, and 3-D entertainment, to cite just a few.

Poliakoff shows how the advent of computers replacing typewriters revolutionized business practices that were in effect for fifty years. He also accurately targets the telecommunications industry which went wild, and ultimately bankrupted multiple companies, causing the loss of thousands of jobs, stocks, pensions etc. on both sides of the Atlantic.

Poliakoff is a "thinking" person's director/writer. His films are always profound on one level, but highly entertaining on every level.

12 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Terribly disappointing, March 4, 2006

By	inframan (the lower depths) - See all my reviews

This film starts off with great swirling Felliniesque pageantry, with Damian Lewis doing a brilliant perfectly tuned & on-target portrayal of a calm cool feral madman entrepreneur of the 1960s or 1970s, Paul Reynolds, surrounded by a collection of pretentious sycophants whose archetypes range back to the early Roman era. They party & posture amid the grounds of Paul's palatial estate when Lizzie strolls through, straight & serious Lizzie, for whom Paul develops an inexplicable attraction that ultimately leads to his & the film's doom. Lizzie, fresh from secretarial school, is hired by Paul as his personal assistant, although she at no time displays any sign of aptitude for either business or politics. Given the task of organizing Paul's vast collection of notes & papers into some kind of accessibility, she proudly displays her accomplishment: everything's been prettily packaged & shelved into four big color groups, bright cheery boxes with not a label in sight. Apparently she's interpreted her duties to be interior decor.

As played by Jodhi May, Lizzie portions her expressions out in either coy tilted-head smirks that teenage girls give dad when they want $80 for new jeans and violently hysterical outbursts that make you wonder if this all takes place in an alternate universe that knows no psychotherapy.

There are plenty of other problems placing this film in the known world, although it tries hard to represent specific points in time, *eras* as it refers self-consciously to them. There's pot-smoking, group sex & communal living, so is it the 1960s or the 1970s or the 1980s? Early on, Paul dreamily says to Lizzie, "Computers, you should get into computers, that's where the future is. Women used to prevail in the field of computers but now the guys are taking over." Oh yeah, when was that? Before mainframes or after?

As the film became progressively more choppy & episodic, I felt I was watching a pastiche of "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead" (sans Shakespeare or Stoppard) as done by Ed Wood, all the real action taking place on an alternate stage/screen.

Vague generalizations substitute for plot movement as grand fluffy pronouncements as made about corporations being hippos & the future of business being in telecommunications & the internet rather than vacuum cleaners. Oh yeah? What heppened to PCs & cell phones?

Too bad. The first 20 minutes at Paul's estate and the ideas driving Friends & Crocodiles along with Damian Lewis's fine performance were really promising. Terrific title, too. But the title's explanation & the rest of the movie are a terrible letdown.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good if you like broad social trends and British television drama, November 23, 2008

By	ML (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This is really about one director's interpretation of the social climate and trend that changed Britain in the 80s and 90s. Maybe it is heavy handed and the acting might not be great at times, but that is besides the point. If you like modern history, social trends and BBC-style television, you will like this DVD.

Also from the same director:
"Shooting the Past" is the author's best drama (*****). The director's "Gideon's Daughter" deals with the 90s, but it is more about a father-daugher relationship (****). "The Lost Price" is decent drama (****).