Leofwine_draca I've seen plenty of bad films in my time, and most of them have been enjoyable in some way, even if only a small one. So when I sat down to watch THE RIDDLE, I had no idea I was about to see one of the most poorly-conceived 'thrillers' of my life, a film that makes television detective series look like Hitchcock. I guess the fact that this film's 'world exclusive premiere' was as a FREEBIE on the front of the Daily Mail might have told me I was in for a rough ride, but even so THE RIDDLE is the pits, you won't see much worse than this.Where to lay the blame? I'd say at every door, pretty much. Director Brendan Foley makes a mess of the whole thing, leading me to suspect that he couldn't 'direct' his way out of a paper bag. The script is poor and the sub-plot involving Charles Dickens narrating a story is boring in the extreme – really, who thought having somebody read a story in scenes interspersed throughout the film would make good cinema? The modern day murder-mystery aspect is a jumbled mess, with no real inclination of who the dead are, why they're dead, and how Vinnie Jones' character has come to investigate. I could barely bring myself to sit through this and, even worse, it lasts for a mind-numbing TWO HOURS. That's two hours of your life you'll never get back, two hours of people talking, eating, occasionally shouting, and drinking in the pub.Obviously what little budget the film-makers had to hand was spent on the cast, because it's astonishingly good for a film of this calibre. Shakespearian actor Derek Jacobi obviously signed up because he got the chance to play Charles Dickens, but he only comes across as a pompous buffoon rather than anyone with weight behind him. Vinnie Jones is an actor I always like, but I was hard pressed to find anything impressive about him here – he's miscast as a journalist and should have stuck to his thuggish roles. There are a couple of attractive actresses in the cast, but they don't have much to work with. Elsewhere we get supporting roles and cameo appearances from the likes of Jason Flemyng (typecast as a bad guy but still the best thing in the movie), a wrinkly Vanessa Redgrave and P. H. Moriarty from The Long Good Friday, who serves to remind us just how GOOD a film shot in London's Docklands can be. Mel Smith's weird appearance is a highlight, if you can call it that.Minor fun can be had from spotting the wealth of errors present: these range from continuity blips (Jones getting the back of his shirt soaked, then, hey presto!, it's clean in the next scene) to more serious factual mistakes (Dickens in his house with modern-day radiators). But in the end, THE RIDDLE is an utterly boring, stupid film, a cheap cash-in on the success of THE DA VINCI CODE, and one to be avoided like the plague.

blanche-2 Everyone on this board acts as if they were just assaulted with meat cleavers.Okay it's not Citizen Kane. I'd rather sit through this than some mindless film with car chases and explosions every five minutes.I think, right off, that this film was made for the wrong audience. It reminded me, in an odd way, of a time travel film called "From Time to Time" that starred Maggie Smith. It was an action and adventure film geared toward children - almost like a Hallmark film - but that adults would also enjoy. I think if this film had been made with that type of audience in mind, for television, it might have been better received.In this film, a woman, Sadie (Vera Day) who runs a London pub is murdered after she finds an unpublished book by Charles Dickens. One of her friends, Mike (Vinnie Jones), a former sports reporter, investigates. He wants to establish himself as an investigative reporter. A police press officer, Kate (Julie Cox), helps him. Also, he is aided by a homeless man.Following a riddle of Sadie's they find the manuscript. We then go between the time of Dickens and today. The book itself describes a murder, and Mike is interested in that, as he tries to solve what happened to Sadie.Mike has another project, looking into the death of a construction worker.This is a tad hard to follow, and the murder of Sadie is easily figured out. I still think the film had some good ideas and people in it, including Vanessa Redgrave, looking incredibly glamorous as Mike's old boss, and Derek Jacobi. Vera Day, who played Sadie, was a knockout, as you can probably tell, in the '50s, kind of a cross between Kim Novak and Janet Leigh.I found the beginning more enjoyable, and it moved a little faster. I didn't care for the ending.The acting was okay, and Vinnie Jones isn't the first sports figure to have a film career, if memory serves.

jack-upland The worst part of this is the story, which rapidly deteriorates from a partly promising premise to an abysmal end. Rather than making the main plot more interesting, the subplot involving Charles Dickens renders the narrative nonsensical. I think I know why those famous actors and actresses were involved: they are hacks who could sleepwalk through their parts and have been involved in enough good films that the occasional putrid offering doesn't matter. There could have been a good film in this, involving modern and Dickensian London, but that would involve an intelligent writer, which this script utterly lacked. The real "riddle" is why such a uninspired and uninspiring story idea ever was made into a film...

gradyharp THE RIDDLE was written and directed by Brendan Foley in what appears to be an attempt to pull the mysteries of the Charles Dickens' novels into a contemporary story, but that attempt is thwarted by electing to use the two periods of time format in which the 'riddle' is unraveled. Despite a cast of well-known actors, trying their best to pull off this direct to DVD movie, the end product is a long, tedious, amateurish mess that can only be considered as entertainment if viewers are fans of the cast as remembered from other films. Mike Sullivan (Vinnie Jones) is a journalist confined to reporting on dog racing events while he dreams of important reporting assignments. A series of similar murders happens to include an old friend of Mike's - Sadie (Vera Day) who runs a pub on the banks of the Thames, having just discovered an old valuable unpublished manuscript by Charles Dickens, and has a heart of gold, giving sandwiches away to such pathetic creatures as an old tramp beachcomber (Derek Jacobi). Sadie's murder attracts Mike to the role of detective journalism and with the help of policewoman Kate (Julie Cox) he begins to tie the investigation to clues he finds in reading the Dickens manuscript. Disrupting the flow of this rather simplistic story is the use of flashbacks to Dickens' time as Dickens (again Derek Jacobi) narrates a rather personal story of peculiar murders. The parallel between stories and the cross casting among actors may have worked in another's hands, but the finessing of this kind of venture escapes writer/director Brendan Foley. He draws his story to a close (at long last) with a tired Hollywoodesque ending. In addition to Jones, Jacobi, Cox, and Day, the film somehow attracted the attention of Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Flemyng, PH Moriarty and Mel Smith: their contributions are minimal but happily distracting. This is a flimsy bit of treacle leaving the viewer wondering how films of this quality ever find funding. Grady Harp