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From: blp Category: Films Date: 28 January 2007 Time: 01:50 PM Review: An unforgivably boring film. This new current affairs drama trend is a tough call that's so far been treated with almost contemptuous lack of care by its purveyors. The dialogue writing here, as in the Trial of Tony Blair, is of that very particular type of badness in which everyone's too articulate and clear about their own intentions and some of the chat, with embarrassing obviousness, is used to explain backstory and supposedly necessary info to an audience presumed to be shockingly ignorant. The pre-credits sequence here is the Queen having her portrait painted by a black man who helpfully lets us in on the fact that the Queen can't vote, but is nevertheless the head of state. I saw an interview with Stephen Frears once, who directed this, and he was talking about Alan Clarke, the very great director of Scum, Made in Britain and Elephant, and he said that some directors, meaning Clarke, like to show you a character start walking in one place and then continue the shot until the get where they're going, while he, Frears, prefers to cut and show only the beginning and end of the walk. That's exactly what's wrong here. Frears shows you only what he thinks is important, so you get no sense of life or anything surprising and you feel absolutely manipulated. Too too too much filmmaking is like this now. Boring, childish rubbish. It's almost as if they end up being boring by trying so hard not to be.