Matt Walsh Entertaining, but not in the same satisfying way as 'Snatch', 'Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels' or '7ayer Cake'. I love twists, but I can only suspend my disbelief so far.A hallmark of this genre (invented by Tarrantino?) is to have people with incongruous-to-gangster traits...I guess these connect the audience to otherwise abhorrent killers/thieves. In this regard they were really trying a bit too hard...the bookie Troy who expresses himself with 80s pop songs...the tender yet brutal Moose. To me it seems like these were the result of an engineered effort to create 'Pulp Fiction-' or 'LS&2SB-' like characters.But I did like Leo's character.

boyinflares This movie isn't the sort of movie i would ordinarily watch, but with the brilliant and beautiful Famke Janssen, i had to give it a go. It was quite cool. Lots of characters, lots of sub-plots and goings-ons made it a bit hard to keep up in the first part of the film. Famke was of course excellent, the most superb performance of the cast. John Hannah, Fred Ward and Amanda Donohoe were great, Eddie Izzard was just annnoying. Coloufull settings and classy costuming was a plus, and Famke looked cool with a blonde wig. The film got good when all the double-crossing and back stabbing started coming into play, it was fun trying to work out who was really working with who, and who was against who. A good film to watch, but it requires some attention paid to it, so you would have to be in the mood.

Framescourer Mockney comes to Brighton; despite a poor reception in the British press and state-funded-British-cinema written all over it I rather hoped that we'd get a bit of the grimy, hard-nosed London-by-the-sea of Graham Greene.It doesn't even aspire to this. Characters straight out of their clone 'n crimp trailers reproduce Guy Ritchie's types. The format looks more like a British TV series than a film (Brighton is a backdrop goldmine, wasted with plastic studio work).I watched this film in pursuit of a good performance from Famke Janssen... she's a bit slick for this company, her brand of big screen impertability belonging more to blockbusters such as Deep Rising. As for acting (a role even!) the search continues. Circus is boring. 3/10

Victor Field "Circus" was barely released in cinemas even in Britain and, from what I understand, skipped US cinemas despite its Columbia backing. It's an okay watch for cable at 3 a.m. (which, interestingly enough, is when I watched it), but that's about it.The movie's scuppered by the ludicrous casting of comedian Brian Conley as a gangster who we see taking a bite of a man's ear in the beginning; he comes off as too playground-villainous to take seriously, and the rest of the movie is just as plausible (tip: do not go and attack and/or threaten people when there are witnesses around, a piece of advice ignored TWICE in the course of the movie). David Logan's script needed some stronger direction and a bit of restraint, instead of piling double-cross upon double-cross until it's soon hard to tell just what the hell's going on, culminating in an "Oh-for-God's-sake!" ending. "Circus" is diverting enough, but a waste of John Hannah, a bigger waste of Fred Ward, something of a waste of Amanda Donohoe, and an absolutely criminal waste of Famke Janssen (who is not only super-fit but, unlike Conley, actually CAN be convincingly tough - it's impossible to believe she appeared in both this and "X-Men" in 2000 ... then again, she did do "House on Haunted Hill"). What she was doing in this movie we can only speculate; did she fancy a trip to Brighton? Or is she a secret fan of "Rebus"? Or "The Brian Conley Show"?And one more piece of advice - don't go mentioning "The Sweet Smell Of Success" in your movie, unless you really want to draw unfair comparisons. Mind you, it's preferable to actually going to a circus; I never liked the things.