Shadow Run [DVD]

Michael Caine stars in this British crime thriller directed by Geoffrey Reeve. The film follows Haskell (Caine), an experienced criminal, who is asked by his boss Landon-Higgins (James Fox) to rob an armoured vehicle transporting watermarked paper which can be used to print counterfeit notes. But when the operation doesn’t go as planned, Haskell begins to wonder if he is being double-crossed…
Shadow Run ought to be considerably more interesting than it is–Geoffrey Reeve is an efficient director and both Michael Caine and James Fox turn in icy performances as, respectively, an almost completely ruthless thief and the renegade intelligence man who hires him for that one last big job. Caine in particular is convincing in the half-hearted attacks of compunction that never stop him killing obstacles. Many of the bit-players–Lesley Grantham, for example–do a lot with almost nonexistent parts. The film counterpoints the planning of the heist with the social embarrassments of the fat schoolboy who becomes, by a series of coincidences, too informed about it and, ultimately, Caine’s secret sharer. Reeve is rather too in love with the cathedral school background of the subplot and skimps too much on the complicated technical business of getting a computerised security van into a radio blackout zone. Still, the boy is excellent, and Caine’s affair with the doomed hooker Rae Baker has some much-needed moments of wit.
On the DVD: Disappointingly, the DVD, whose Dolby surround sound does miracles for the scenes of schoolboy choristers, is presented in pan and scan 1.33:1, and has no extra features except for chapter selection and trailers for other films.–Roz Kaveney