This is a script which must have appealed on paper to the actors - there's lots and lots of snappy dialogue - BUT the pacing, structure and action sequences are woeful and in the end it leaves Paul McGann, Susan Lynch and Tom Georgeson, to name but three, in limbo, mouthing silly platitudes at the end and embarrassing themselves and us in the process.
So who's to blame - the writer or the director? And how come those producers from Channel 4 etc got involved? Couldn't they suss out this dog beforehand?
The photography (from Tony Imi) is dark and gloomy, appropriately enough, as most of the film is set in a filthy tenement lift shaft, but it makes for an unrelievedly gloomy look.
There's little attempt to show lives and characters other than during the action .
The film is mainly a real-time story, with a prequel where the two protagonists "meet cute" - she's hanging off a balcony & he's sort of trying to rescue her. Then we go to real-time lift shaft fun, followed by some truly mawkish stuff in the hospital at the end. Poor Tom Georgeson is given no real motivation for his actions.
Paul McGann does what he can with the script but he's playing such a ditz that one feels he'd be better off in some nursing home for the terminally frightened. He's also called upon to do illogical and stupid things (what a surprise, in this film). Susan Lynch plays with energy but again, it's a cardboard character with no reality, derived from memories of Hollywood films & television sitcoms. Again, she has to crawl up & down steel cables (as one so frequently does) whilst dressed in a slip of a dress and a cardigan....
