 Maybe it's me |
| Review Date: June 17, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Richard B. Schwartz, Columbia, Missouri USA |
| It may just be me, but I found this excrutiatingly slow and very poorly directed. The plot is fine and the casting superb, but there is a low-budget feel to the direction that taints the overall effort. Dalgleish is investigating the murder of a forensics expert in a country-house lab. The interminable opening establishes that everyone in the cast is a plausible suspect. The cast includes such excellent actors as Brenda Blethyn and Barry Foster and Geoffrey Palmer plays the victim (who, by all accounts, deserved what he got). It all sounds good enough, but the lighting and the sound are wretched. In one crucial 'confession' scene, where lip and eye movement are essential, the characters are shot at a vast distance across a graveyard. When we finally come in and can actually see their faces, the laconic, pensive Dalgleish has turned away from the man to whom he is speaking. I get it that Dalgleish is a poet who has recently lost his wife, but he is also an investigator working amid a high body count situation. As others have noted, the result of the direction (and especially the fact that this is shot on tape, not film) is an appearance of utter amateurism on the part of gifted actors. At times the show looks like high school dramatics or small-town dinner theatre. That is a pity, given the quality of the novel on which the story is based. For me, this is a rental only. |
Great entertainment
|
| Review Date: November 4, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Lois Epstein, syracuse, new york United States |
| Roy Marsden as Inspector Dalgliesh is absolutely wonderful. He is quiet and reserved and a force to be reckoned for any criminal he encounters. These are very cagey mysteries so one must pay attention - but that is not too difficult as they are much too interesting to look away from. I have all of this series and they are all marvelous entertainment. Some of them run a bit long, so be prepared to sit a while - it will be worth it. |
ONE OF MY FAVORITE OF THE SERIES
|
| Review Date: May 3, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Elaine J. Campbell, Rancho Mirage, CA United States |
because the script is compact and keeps you guessing to the very end. Because the perfomances are top notch: notably, Brenda Blethyn, who has gained such success in recent years, Barry Foster, Geoffrey Palmer, and last but not least, Roy Marsden as Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh. His is a taut and focused performance,and we even get a glimpse of Dalgliesh as a married man, albeit too briefly, as his wife and what appears to be his unborn child die suddenly. While not fully explained in this version, the reason for their deaths is well noted in other Dalgliesh novels and productions.
We have here a government scientific operation. And the setting takes place in the countryside. We have an initial murder, not related to the major case, which brings Dalgliesh briefly to the area. He must return when a major figure at the government house meets his demise. The intricacies of plot begin here, and the characters are more fully developed than in most mysteries, giving the viewer a rather in-depth look into their various relationships, all of which are interesting.
If one is a Dalgliesh fan, Death of an Expert Witness should satisfy. It certainly kept me on the edge of my seat, as well as Marsden's crisp and terse performance.
|
Death to a hack screenwriter
|
| Review Date: January 22, 2006 |
| Reviewer: David Janes, |
| I wasted an hour on this video; fortunately I rented it from my local library. If I'd paid $5 at Walmart, I would have felt cheated. "Daytime Drama" is a kindness to the soaps; "Made for TV" is a kindness to this woodenly acted, cartoonishly written soap opera. Sledgehammers portray emotion more subtly than this rending of the P.D.JAMES novel of the same name. And to think, the Baroness James of Holland Park lived to see this excrescence. It is akin to the butchery to and perversion of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park done by a recent movie. In this "based upon" retelling of "Death of an Expert Witness", every character's sexual, marital and family problem is tossed in, like chopped lettuce, for filler on a two-hour DVD. By the time the deed was done, I was expecting six other characters to get offed, they were at least as deserving as Lorrimer, and wondering who Adam Dalgliesh was, he played such an undistinguished and irrelevant part. Rent this video, if you must, but don't buy it. Better still, pass up this bad soap opera for James's excellent book. |
Mysteries like you've never seen!
|
| Review Date: January 21, 2006 |
| Reviewer: James Hatsis, Greensboro, GA USA |
Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is my all time favorite tv detective. The video looks dated, but the stories are great. These mysteries keep you guessing untill the last minute. You better hit the pause key if you leave the room for a minute or ypu'll miss a vital clue... they are very subtle (Unlike some modern mysteries that give you everything in the first few minutes of the show) Watch more than one epesode and you will be hooked.
James hatsis
James1@OconeeAirService.com |
|
No details are available for this product
No video reviews found for this product.
