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Ordinary Decent Criminal
1999 - R - 94 Mins.
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| Director: Thaddeus O' Sullivan | | Producer: James Mitchell | | Written By: Gerard Stembridge | | Starring: Kevin Spacey, Linda Fiorentino, Peter Mullan, Colin Farrell |
| Review by: Joe Rickey |
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A film full of unlikable characters and a slow-moving nature that makes for a disappointing film considering the cast. Ordinary Decent Criminal, directed by Thaddeus O’ Sullivan, tells the story of famed Irish criminal Michael Lynch (Name change from actual criminal Martin Cahill) and how he arrogantly disobeyed the law and was the ultimate media whore, making very public appearances just to taunt those who were after him.
The film’s shortcomings start with some miscasting no doubt made in the name of box office appeal. As the main character Lynch, Kevin Spacey is forced to adopt an Irish accent to fit with the real life persona whose story is being told. Unfortunately, he is unable to be consistent in using the accent because it is easily noticeable that the accent comes and goes throughout the film. This doesn’t fit the character and becomes annoying after a while. It certainly doesn’t help that the character of Lynch is such an unlikable person that it is very difficult to care much about his fate. He is a smug and overly boisterous character, almost chewing the screen as he makes speech after speech laden with various cuss words.
As Lynch’s wife, Linda Fiorentino contains almost no screen presence and makes little impression on the viewer. Her character is so disposable that it is almost pointless to have her in the film at all. For those of you expecting Colin Farrell to have a rather large role in the film because he is featured on the cover, you will be sorely disappointed. He, like Fiorentino, hardly makes any impression at all because he is given maybe ten lines of dialogue in the entire film. The film also suffers from the nature in which director O’ Sullivan handles the material. He sees fit to dwell on the way in which Lynch handled the media for much of the film while a subplot is introduced in the film centering on the heist of a famous painting. The film would have been better off concentrating more on the planning of the heist than the aforementioned infinitely less interesting plot point. As a result, the film grows tiresome and seemingly endless rather quickly. Thankfully though, the film runs only 94 minutes.
The one bright spot in the film is that the cinematography is rather interesting to behold, as it highlights the not often seen Irish countryside. Overall though, Ordinary Decent Criminal is a miscast and dull mess of a movie that got the fate that it deserved when Miramax, knowing the dud they had on their hands, released it direct to video in the USA where it can languish on the shelves like it rightly should.
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