In an ideal world the system for making films would have stopped this being such a waste of time. The Director would have told the writer that the script was stodgy , pretentious and incomprehensible. Long, gabbled screeds of exposition from one of the characters are no substitute for seeing things happen. If that had not worked, the Producer would have told the Director to get a grip. Some scenes are shot in what seem to be slow motion, so long does it take to do the simplest thing such as light a cigarette. On the other hand important events seem to get missed out altogether. And if that process had not worked the writer and director could have gone to the producer and said they now realised it was a terrible mistake to try to stretch it all out over 7 hours, so could they get an outside editor to cut it back. That's the way it's supposed to happen. Unfortunately, the writer, director and producer of this massively boring piece of pretension have been much too easy on each other. Maybe that's because all three roles are filled by Hugo Blick. Some people claimed this would be Britain's answer to "The Wire." That's a bit like saying a hole in the road is Britain's answer to the Grand Canyon. All of the actors (and there are some very fine ones on display) did a very good job of playing their parts. But if one of them had said early on "I'm not saying this; this is rubbish," everything would have been much better.
Review of The Shadow Line
