Revelation

I was baised towards this film as I know someone in it. I feel so sorry for the producer as he must have had great visions for this film, as did I. There are some shocking moments that leave you wide eyed and disbelieving what you have just seen, but it seems like a decent film spoiled by some terrible acting.

The last line that Jacob says.... had us rolling around in laughter from its pure cheeseyness.

How did such a good story line get made into such a Straight-to-TV quality film?

Could have been so good. Ended up as disappointing.

Director/writer Stuart (PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED) Urban's portentous contemporary religious conspiracy thriller marks a return to feature film production for Britain's Romulus Films (THE AFRICAN QUEEN, OLIVER!, THE DAY OF THE JACKAL) for the first time since 1974's THE ODESSA FILE. The story concerns a young couple (he Jake, the computer hacker ex-con son of an enigmatic billionaire akin to Rupert Murdoch, she Mira, a brainy alchemist) searching for a religious relic ('a loculus') purported to possess mythical powers. This sends them spinning around Europe and Asia following alcehmical, astrological and religious clues, all the while stalked by Udo Kier's supremely villainous 'Grand Master' as Urban stirs all these ingredients into a heady brew, cutting back and forth in time and place with no lack of visual style, finally bringing them to the boil in an apocalyptic climax with implications for the future of mankind. Unfortunately the film, ambitious in scope and breadth, has a reach which exceeds its grasp; especially as it ultimately seems to pay off as a two-hour recruitment film for the Catholic church. Dull leads don't help, although there's sterling support from the enigmatic Terence Stamp as Jake's father, Celia Imrie as Mum, Derek Jacobi as a weaselly University librarian and Ron Moody as Sir Isaac Newton (yes, really). Good to see an independent British film aiming high, but difficult to imagine who'll pay to see this generic mishmash (it lacks sufficient impressive horror or action setpieces for a start). After all, if Demi Moore in THE SEVENTH SIGN and Johnny Depp in THE NINTH GATE couldn't bring in the punters, what hope does this similarly themed and thoughtful, if highly-flawed, fantasy have? File under 'Interesting Failure'.

As a fan of Udo Kier, if a movie of his comes on the TV, I will watch it. So I watched Revelation, and, not being biased, Udo was a actually the best thing about this movie. Which is odd when you consider that Terence Stamp is in the same movie. But I don't know what happened. Stamp is AWFUL in this movie. Maybe he just couldn't be bothered, but his acting is atrocious. His line delivery is awful! But Revelation isn't that good a movie. And maybe Stamp knew that and so didn't put the effort in.

The movie is about some box called the Loculus which has been around since the crucifixion of Christ, and Stamp's character leaves his son Jake (James D'Arcy), and his female friend, to stop the evil Grand Master (Udo Kier) from getting hold of this box.

From watching the movie, I would imagine director Stuart Urban probably hasn't had much experience as the whole movie seems a little to student-movie-esquire. The acting from everyone (bar Kier) is atrocious, and a director who can't get a good performance out of Terence Stamp is clearly crap. And there is no chemistry between James D'Arcy and whoever plays the girl at all. The only thing worth watching it for is Udo Kier, he's always been good at playing the bad guy, and the only thing remotely creepy in it are the Grand Master's dogs who move freakishly fast.

Overall, unless you are a Kier fan, watching this would be a waste of your time. And it you're a Stamp fan, STEER WELL CLEAR! You'll be completely shocked his acting could stoop so low.

This movie will stand as a functional litmus test for years to come. People will be able to see how others react and measure them by their reaction.

For there is no doubt that this is one of the worst movies ever made. It could be signed Ed Wood but it's too poor for even that - it's more like artificial wood.

It's always hard to single out one culprit when a movie is so painfully embarrassingly poor as this one, and to concoct a product in this extreme category takes the contributions and lack of talent of thousands. Was it the writer? Undoubtedly. Was it the idiot who came up with this idiotic story line? Assuredly? Was it the direction? What direction? Was it the editor? Yes - but what material did the editor Julian Rodd have to work with? And so forth. Everyone can be blamed, and anyone can point a finger at someone else - and they should have been doing a lot of that by now.

You will search long and hard for a movie as amateurish as this. Not only is there no continuity in the storytelling, the editing looks like it's been done by an orangutan drunk on absinthe. And when I say bad, you're probably thinking, 'oh that bad is it?' but you would have missed the point. For it's worse. Whatever you're thinking or imagining, think and imagine worse - far worse - and still you won't be close. Did they ever get away with things like this in your kindergarten film school? Nope - kids this bad, be they only 3 - 5 years old, were sent home to their parents and put on bread and water. Get the picture now?

In fact the only redeeming feature of this movie - and the only reason we were able to view it and thus review it - was the head of the cast Natasha Wightman. You might recognise her from that horrible adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express from a few years back. The one where Hercule plays with a laptop computer for hours without a battery, without any physical connection to anything, and still basically gets flash-class graphics back that explain the entire story to him. Even Google can't do that. At any rate, Natasha was Mary Debenham, the part played by Vanessa Redgrave in the original (and far better) movie, and she's a lot easier to look at. In fact, Natasha is a 'dish' and the people behind the camera really know how to make her look good - and she really does look good. Of course you'll find her coiffures absolutely impossible given the circumstances she's supposed to be in, but that's the kind of movie you made the mistake of renting. Caveat emptor.

PS. You'll find another reviewer here who says the movie was 'well researched'. Remember: it's a 'litmus test'. And that reviewer's test came out the wrong.

I rented this on DVD not knowing what it was about, or how good it was. Sometimes I walk away with a surprisingly good film, but not this time. (Maybe it was the image of Terence Stamp on the cover that assured me it couldn't be all bad.) The acting is weak with little or no emotion. You feel no empathy towards the characters who recite their lines like they were reading shopping list. Dead pauses in the script were seemingly immune to the editor's splices. Oh, I could go on, but it's easier to just say, "Miss this film at all costs!"