O Último Trem para Veneza

everybody likes to watch bad movies from time to time, simply because they're so bad it's funny. well, this is not one of those movies. no matter how well developed your sense of irony might be, this movie is so insultingly bad that I doubt anybody could derive any pleasure from watching it.

one of the biggest complaints my friends and I had was that it feels like it was written by 3 separate people on 3 different continents, without any knowledge of what the others were doing. for some reason, hugh grant takes a train to venice (imagine that!) and on the trip he meets this woman and has gibberish conversations with her. malcolm mcdowell comes around and says some needlessly cryptic things and a guy gets tossed off the train. then there's the nazis who aren't so much characters as really bad caricatures played by people with no talent.

oh yeah...there's a naked man in a cage at one point, as well as some american nazis holding a rally and beating guys up in the street, though they're in Europe...

once hugh gets to venice, all hell breaks loose...well, not really. the movie just doesn't make any sense from this point on. it's like a bad fever dream. i won't even try to explain because there's no point.

granted, a movie doesn't have to be linear or have a coherent plot to be a good movie...look at david lynch. however, this is not a david lynch film. it's just bad. there is no story, plot, coherence, there are no real characters, and really no point. i'm angry that i watched this and now hate everybody associated with its production.

If you like experimental films then you might get a modicum of enjoyment out of the non-linear story line, interleaved editing, and Kenneth Anger-style fantasy imagery, but to the rest of us it is a jumbled mess. As the film progresses, many cards are laid on the table, but not a one of them is played. The dialog is embarrassingly bad, and the meager plot meanders in a few different directions, but doesn't develop any of them. It wasn't even bad enough to laugh at. The ending came close to being laughable, but when I realized that this was in fact the end I was furious at having wasted so much time. The ONLY redeeming quality of the film was the images of Venice during Carnival. That was quite haunting and beautiful, but not nearly worth the boredom and frustration one must endure in the vain attempt to make sense out of this cluttered mishmash.

I was in my mums flat waiting for cable guy to turn up and I thought I would watch one of her DVDs. Well everything seemed fine when I read the cover and read the plot of film but as soon as it started I began to wonder.... has my mum gone mad!? Why did she buy this? From the acting to the direction I was appalled! This has to be one of the worst films I have ever seen! So Bad I still watched it to the end , hoping that there would be an explanation as to why this film was ever made in the first place or what it all meant and to think this was made with Malcolm McDowell (shame on you Malcolm!). the best thing to do with the DVD if you unfortunately have it in your collection is to use it as a nice coaster! Truly Awful!!

And I don't think I am exaggerating. Everything is terribly wrong in this picture: from the absolute lack of story (from minute 20 there is nothing to understand) to the amateur performances or cinematography. A complete failure.

Movies that parallel reality with a surreal, dream-like existence run the risk of alienating any audience not completely in tune with the director's vision; in this case, that alienation turns to unintended comedy when journalist Hugh Grant boards the Orient Express from Munich to Venice, where neo-Nazis have sneaked aboard and threaten to cause chaos. Also on-board this train trip to Hell is Tahnee Welch as a recently-widowed stage actress, her little girl and caretaker, plus an internationally known dancer, some drag queens, and Malcolm McDowell as a tough-talking "Stranger". From what I could decipher, it appears Grant blames the presence of the Nazis on himself (he apparently wrote an unflattering piece about Skinheads), but once the train pulls into Venice (in time for Carnival!) all that business aboard the Express seems to have been forgotten. It would be impossible to credit director Carlo U. Quinterio for his 'unique' vision; the filmmaker blatantly copies the criss-crossing style of Nicolas Roeg's thriller "Don't Look Now" (also set in Venice), creating an indecipherable scenario wherein the editor was allowed to go berserk with the flash-forwards and flashbacks. The movie is so cluttered up with murky minutiae that it allows the straight-faced proceedings some camp value (how else to describe the cobbling together of Nazi atrocities and S&M imagery with sex scenes involving Grant nibbling on Welch's breasts--shown again under the closing credits!). Low-budget mess resembles those Golan-Globus pictures from the 1980s, and poor Grant seems at a complete loss for words. NO STARS from ****