The Flying Scotsman (2006)

Sometimes I despair for the joke that we call 'the British Film Industry'. Although there are a few notable exceptions, for the most part we seem to be stuck in a rut of producing safe, predictable, old-fashioned 'family viewing' fare that is just a wearisome retread of far better films that were produced years before. How many versions of Chariots of Fire do we need for goodness sake?!

Unfortunately, The Flying Scotsman is yet another 'safe and oh-so-predictable' sports biopic. This time around it's focussed on Scottish world champion cyclist, Graeme Obree.

Obree's main claim to fame is holding two world records (albeit for a relatively short period of time) whilst struggling to cope with depression. His back-story is the key to why this film just doesn't compare well with other films of the same genre - there just isn't enough story here to give the film any real depth, a problem compounded by the fact that a lone cyclist running endless loops around an indoor track doesn't exactly make for gripping viewing as an adrenaline-pumping sport.

The film starts well, and atmospherically, with a 'flash forward' from the main events of the film: a hooded figure, who we will later learn is cyclist Graeme Obree (Jonny Lee Miller), enters a wood carrying his bike and a long, thick rope. The hooded figure ties the rope over a tree and around his neck before jumping off the branch he has climbed up to.

We then cut to a very young Obree being bullied at school, returning home to receive a Christmas present of a new bike. The bike, or more importantly the speed with which he can ride it to escape the school bullies, becomes the young boy's passion.

Fast forward a few years and the now-married Obree is running a run-down bicycle shop that's closing down because it's losing money. Douglas Baxter (Brian Cox) takes an old bike to Obree's shop for repair in preference to the shiny, modern competitor store opposite and begins a friendship that results in him helping his friend build his own bike to compete in World events - a design that will subsequently cause much bitterness and rankle with the Olympic committee who are more interested in standard designs that can enable the traditional manufacturers to make money than in any genuine innovation that leads to improved world records.

With the closure of his shop and a young child to support, Obree is forced to take up a menial job as a cycle courier to suplement his wife's meagre income as a nurse. On one delivery run he bumps into another courier 'Malky' (Billy Boyd) who encourages Obree to train for the world championships and agrees to become his personal manager. We then follow Obree's progress as he deals with the politics of the sport and his own personal demons and mental illness - illness which he refuses to accept professional help on, even after the suicide attempt we've witnessed at the start of the film, at least until there's a sense of closure at the very end of the film.

By all accounts Obree himself is a difficult character, and this is beautifully portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller who captures the charm of a man who captivated his best friend and manager, as well as his wife and young son, and local priest, whilst also showing his stubborn, arrogant self-destructive nature. The film is worth seeing for Miller's performance alone. Unfortunately the rest of the cast can't live up to the high water mark he sets.

This seems to have been recognised by the director and/or writers in that the supporting characters suffer with a lack of characterisation or even basic screen time as Miller is the main focus throughout. The problem is that when you have a film that is almost entirely about a rather uncommunicative, insular man then the end-result becomes equally insular and rather dull to watch.

Laura Fraser, as Obree's wife, does her best with a part that gives no insight into Obree's family life, and no indication as to why she stuck by her husband despite his increasingly erratic behaviour. When Miller destroys the struggling-to-make-ends-meet family's washing machine to build a faster mechanism for his bike we get a single shot of shouted anger when she returns home but from thereonin it's back to playing the 'dutiful, supportive wife in the background' for the remainder. There's no attempt to show her life in struggling with Obree's obsession and mental illness.

Billy Boyd fares slightly better, with more screen time that adds the comedic value so sorely needed, as Obree's friend and manager 'Malky'. But one feels throughout that one is watching Billy Boyd the 'lovable hobbit' rather than any real-life character, and there is zero chemistry between him and his supposed love interest Katie, Ann Obree's best friend that Malky supposedly has a huge crush on. The very thin B-storyline of Malky's pursuit of Katie is so unconvincing that half way through the film even the director/writer appear to have decided to abandon it: we suddenly jump from Katie telling Malky he has no chance of taking her out to the two suddenly moving in together.

Brian Cox as the priest friend who tries to help Obree pull his life together, acts the same character we've seen him play a million times before, in a role so generic and under-written there's no real belief in his back-story - a back story that is so clumsily delivered it would have been more subtle to have written it up on a big placard that the actor holds as he first enters the frame.

In an attempt to cover the lack of any real story, the film invents a cartoon-character villain, in the form of an Olympic Committee member determined to do Obree down. Whilst it may be true that the Olympic Committee had vested interests that conflicted with Obree's 'Do it yourself' approach, the main representative character is introduced with such ridiculous put-down lines and attitude that one wonders why the film-makers didn't go the whole hog and have him constantly stroking a twirly moustache, with loud duhn-du-duhn music sound effects every time he entered the frame.

The sport itself is another problem. It's hard to make one man on a bike in an almost completely empty indoor gymnasium, cycling around in loops exciting or adrenalin-pounding in the way that most sports biopics which have been written to the same formula as this can do. Admittedly the director makes some brave attempts with bike 'point of view' shots and rapid inter-cutting, but it's clearly an uphill struggle.

If you like your entertainment safe, predictable and British and can find nothing else worth watching on TV, then The Flying Scotsman is probably worth a rental. But supplied in a completely vanilla form, with not so much as a trailer for an extra, this is most definitely not a purchase, despite an arresting performance from Miller. The producers can't be bothered to provide so much as a commentary track or interview with the real life Obree or cast and crew, despite the abundance of talk shows around the time of the film's release that took place. If they can't be bothered to put out any kind of extra's for the DVD, why should you be bothered to shell out a premium price for such a lacklustre disc?

The Good German (2007)

With three of Hollywood's hottest acting properties, a reputable 'name' director in the form of Steven Soderbergh, and an affectionate parodying of the 'Golden age of movies' you're probably wondering, as I was, why The Good German has received such a bashing from the critics. You won't be wondering any more after you've seen the film.

Technically proficient it may be, but with an almost incomprehensible, and ridiculously complex plot, serious miscasting and weak performances from its main leads, together with a totally confusing directorial style, it's hard to come away thinking of the film as anything other than the worst kind of vanity project for those who decided to make it.

Presented in 4:3 format black and white, complete with sliding dissolves, obvious back projection work and a somewhat stilted style, you might think that Soderbergh was seriously attempting to recreate the techniques of the 1940's. While the approach has a certain charm, the gimmick soon palls, not least because the attention to 1940's detail hasn't extended to the dialogue which is full of four letter words. Not big. Not clever. And not at all necessary - so why was it done?

But the artificially styled homage is just the start of the problems. As a fan of 1940's film noir myself I'd argue that the scripts of the day were more sophisticated and well written than the average 'hand your brain in at the door' movie we get from Hollywood these days. Unfortunately Soderbergh seems to have interpreted this sophistication as an excuse to put everything except the kitchen sink into a plot that is all-but-impossible to follow, it takes so many twists and turns.

George Clooney plays 'good guy' Captain Jacob 'Jake' Geismer, an American military journalist sent to post-War Berlin to cover a conference, only to find himself drawn into a murder investigation involving his driver Patrick Tully and his former mistress Lena Brandt, who is now his driver's girlfriend.

As a plot involving good American soldiers gone bad, Russian contraband, and evil German nuclear scientists expands, the usual clichés of the genre play out, with Clooney's character seemingly caught in the middle of a series of murders nobody else seems much interested in.

Arguably the biggest problem with the film is the casting. Toby Maguire is horribly miscast as the cripple-kicking, spiv boyfriend of Blanchett's character. He's far too young and far too likeable and recognisable from his previous work to be taken seriously in the role. George Clooney has shown he's capable of turning in an excellent performance when required, witness Syria and Good Night, and Good Luck for recent examples, but here he coasts along playing himself as if on auto-pilot. And even the seriously impressive Cate Blanchett can't rescue the whole mess with what little she's given to work with here. 'Enigmatic' may sound great on paper, but on film it plays out as just plain dull.

Direction is adequate, and there's a certain amount of fun to be had in comparing the shooting style used throughout with that which was prevalent in the 40's. But it soon grows tired, and while one can admire scenes such as the last one, closely mirroring the airport scene from Casablanca, for their technique, after 90 minutes one finds oneself wondering just what was the point?!

The DVD is a perfect transfer of material deliberately designed to look like it was shot over 40 years ago. There's little to complain about but, being black and white and of 4:3 ratio, little to get excited about either. Sound is similarly 'of the era' which means this is not a disc which is going to set your home cinema system alight, as presumably recognised by its asking price, which is low for a film that only received its first theatrical outing earlier this year.

Given the 'passion' of those involved in this flawed project, it is inexcusable that the disc is bereft of any extra's at all. There's not so much as a trailer, let alone the usual 'Making of' featurette or director's commentary. Maybe all those involved were just too embarrassed to talk about the project? Whatever the reason, it means there's absolutely no good reason to buy the disc, and only those who are fans of one of the main leads should consider this even as a rental.

We're getting to that time of year where it's usual to draw up lists of awards for the year. If there were an award for 'Most disappointing film of the year' this one would surely win it. Avoid!

Poltergay (2006)

Released (if not reviewed) in time for Halloween - that time of year when we all try and put the willies up each other (ah yes, the old jokes are the best), Poltergay is a French horror comedy that tells the tale of a young couple, Marc and Emma, moving into an old ruin they intend to renovate, only to find it is haunted.

An over-familiar theme perhaps, but one with a new slant this time around - the ghosts are five gay men, all killed 30 years previously when the nightclub that previously occupied the spot went up in flames after a freak electrical accident.

The ghosts soon have their eye on young Marc and chaos ensues as the sounds of Boney M's Ra-Ra-Rasputin' disturb his sleep, and the ghosts, which seemingly only he can see, turn his life into a living hell.

It's not long before Marc has lost his wife, his job and seemingly his sanity, as those around him fail to understand what is going on. It's left to the ghosts to save the day and make up for their reprehensible behaviour, reuniting our hero with the long-suffering wife he's always loved in time for the final credits.

The Americans could learn a lot about making FUNNY comedy from Poltergay, particularly when it involves gay subject matter. Recent films such as I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry have been universally derided as 'offensive', but Poltergay manages to walk that very thin line between poking fun at and being offensive to gays, with an end result that all audiences, no matter what their sexual preference, should enjoy.

That it does so is partly down to the script - more clever than most reviewers have given it credit for, not least because it manages to tell a story of tolerance without ever coming across as preachy or being too full of propaganda. But even a good script can get wasted if the talent needed to deliver it isn't available, and the success of the film is mostly down to an excellent performance from lead actor Clovis Cornillac.

Cornillac is certainly easy on the eye - always essential if you want to pull in both 'the gays' AND the ladies that are needed for a 'date movie. It's hard, based on the evidence visible here, to believe the actor is in his 40's when he looks and plays the part of someone in their mid-20's so convincingly.

But it's Cornillac's comedic timing and good humour, rather than his looks, that raise this low budget farce above the norm - the man is clearly a leading actor of some talent, even when given somewhat difficult material to deliver. He carries the film through what in other hands would be some decidedly sticky patches (not that kind!), particularly with regard to plausability, as his character is forced to go through the gamut of emotions. Fear, anger, humour, dejection and pity are all realistically portrayed when he is abandoned by friends and family, who decide that the five 'flamboyantly dressed' imaginary men he keeps seeing are just a symptom of his repressed homosexual desire.

Cornillac is ably supported by an excellent cast, which include not just his poor put-upon wife Emma (Julie Depardieu), but also the couple's best friends - a married couple who clearly have problems of their own, not the least of which is the fact that the wife is a slut whose husband is totally oblivious to her antics, even when performed right under his nose. Worse, she's a slut that's determined to bed her husband's best friend - whether he wants to be bedded or not.

All the ingredients for a good farce are here, and as the film develops it quickly moves from its seemingly 'straight' horror opening, as the couple first move into their new home, into the more traditional realms of farce, with an increasing number of weird and wacky characters being introduced as the film progresses.

First of all there's the ghosts - a mixed bunch that include a 'closet heterosexual' who actually seems most interested in Marc's wife, despite the continual admonishments from his very effeminate partner, the graffiti artist who is obsessed with drawing pictures of an erect phallus at every available opportunity, and the sad lonely character who misses his partner 'Huggy' who survived the nightclub fire that has placed him in limbo.

But the camp 70's stereotypical ghosts aren't the sole source of the humour. Recurring characters are two policeman, called in when Marc finds the first crude sketching of a penis drawn on his walls and a Polaroid of his bare arse taken when he took a shower. They subsequently manage to catch our hero in more and more compromising-looking situations that the character has no control over. There's the psychiatrist who is convinced that Marc is just a closeted gay, persuading him to take a disastrous visit to a gay bar to discover his true sexuality; the father-in-law who's always disapproved and now has the evidence of the mental instability he'd always suspected; the psychic ghost hunter Marc calls in who seems more obsessed with MacDonald's than getting rid of ghosts, and a whole bunch of other minor characters that add to the humour as the film gains momentum and heads towards a nice, tidy feel-good ending.

Clearly, this is not a film for the 'torture porn' crowd. What's surprising is that although there is clearly a strong gay sub-text throughout, this is very much aimed at straight audiences. There are no gross-out gags, as there would be if this had been an American production, although there are one or two (and only one or two) four letter words, along with all those sketches of erect phalluses that one of the ghosts keeps drawing.

Picture quality of this anamorphic 16:9 widescreen presentation is extremely variable, although one suspects this is down to the low budget source material, rather than the transfer itself. With so much of the film taking place at night this was never going to be showcase picture quality, but noise is overly intrusive and the picture ridiculously murky at times.

Extra's are limited to a Making of, which is less a making of than an edited 'home video' recording of parts of the main shoot. The lack of subtitles (which may have been available through some menu option I missed) were a barrier to getting any kind of enjoyment out of this, other than recognising that the crew seemed to have fun making the film.

In a world of 'me too', unfunny, gross-out comedy movies, Poltergay is a good, if somewhat old-fashioned, gem. It's the ideal 'switch off the brain and have a few laughs' movie to watch after a hard day at the office. Recommended, even if it is in French!

Cellular (2004)

Writer Larry Cohen seems to have an obsession with telephones! His last film Phone Booth featured Colin Farrell spending most of the running time of the film stuck in a phone booth talking to a terrorist who was threatening to kill him if he left the booth. What sounds like a disaster on paper (a man talking to a phone for 90 minutes??!!) turned out to be one of my favourite films of 2003, so I was looking forward to this 'variation on a theme' follow-up from the same writer, which has been available in stores for a couple of years now, but which I only discovered last weekend.

The scenario, this time around, is that kidnapped housewife Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) finds herself with a damaged phone that is only able to make a call to a random stranger (Chris Evans). Evans' character, who's just been ditched by his girlfriend (played on and off-screen by his real-life girlfriend Jessica Biel) because of his immaturity and inability to commit, is the unlucky recipient of that call. As a result he spends most of the film running around Los Angeles as various events unfold around what the kidnappers are after and what they've done in the past.

The first thing that needs to be said, particularly if your interest in this film is largely down to the afore-mentioned Phone Booth is that although Cohen is credited as writer, the screenplay is credited to Chris Morgan, and it's fairly obvious from the extra's that this involved some pretty major surgery on Cohen's original script, to the point where one wonders if it's just the title and very basic kidnapping premise that's been kept. The end result of these rewrites is that the film lacks the weight or seriousness of Phone Booth, often coming across more as a Crank-style send-up.

Whether you think this less naturalistic style is an improvement over the more serious traditional style will ultimately boil down to whether you like your thrillers to be 'real world' or full of laughs and slightly out-of-whack, as this one undoubtedly is.

I err towards the latter when the end-result is as well-executed as this one is. Undoubtedly the film is a lesser work than Phone Booth, but it's a fun 90 minutes and very enjoyable for all that.

Male lead Chris Evans (best known as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies, and most recently seen in Danny Boyle's fundamentally flawed Sunshine) is pretty enough to play the lead in a film like this, although for me the jury's still out as to whether he has the depth and ability to become what one female producer rather laughingly calls 'the new Tom Cruise'. OK, the guy has nice pecs and all, but let's not get carried away based on a single, relatively 'easy to play' role. The young actor is certainly easy on the eye, but one can't help thinking that his agent's seeming insistence that he be shown half-naked in every film he's made since this one is going to saddle him with a 'himbo' reputation that can only detract from any real acting talent he may (or may not) have.

The stand-out for me, acting wise, is Kim Basinger in a role that's a real revelation. I hadn't understood why the actress was given an oscar for a pretty average performance in the above-average L.A. Confidential, but here she pulls out all the stops in a difficult 'weepy' role that must have been torture to film.

William H Macy is as effortlessly brilliant as ever, having the film's best comedic lines which, if the included 'Making of' documentary is to be believed, he wrote himself. As a retired cop who encounters Evans character early in the film, he becomes the moral core of the film, desperate to find out if a wrong has been committed before retirement from a job that's had no excitement or thrills for over 25 years.

Given the similarities between this and Crank, it seems odd to have chosen Jason Statham as the lead baddie (again! playing himself again!), but as this film predates Crank it may well be that Cellular is what inspired that film, rather than vice-versa.

Director David R. Ellis delivers visually on a thrill-ride popcorn movie that never lets up the pace. Several pretty outrageous laugh-out-loud moments help release the tension on this almost non-stop on-the-edge-of-your-seat basic chase movie, with some clever lines and scenarios that are clearly giving a knowing wink to those familiar with the general format of the chase genre or just the general nightmares of dealing with modern technology items like the mobile phone.

Weaker movies would set up ludicrous scenarios to enable the 'hero' to escape. Cellular takes more of an approach of 'let's make sure that everything that COULD go wrong DOES go wrong', with some clever plot points based around how mobile phones work (or don't, particularly when you REALLY need them to). It's fun stuff if you can get your head around the intentionally humorous skew and occasional breaking of rules in a film that for the most part had set you up thinking it would follow the usual formula for the genre.

Picture quality on this transfer is superb, and surround sound - when it does feature - helps put you in the middle of the action scenes, of which there are a surprising number, despite the small budget the movie had.

Extra's are fairly generous. The traditional 25 minute 'Making of', Dialling Up Cellular, isn't just the marketing fluff piece it could have been, and is joined by two vaguely associated short documentaries: one on how cellular technology is changing society, the other on the real life 'dirty cop' case that inspired the film.

The director's commentary, mis-credited on the DVD, features the director his 'stunt co-ordinator' sister and 'producer' daughter talking through the film, with the novel approach of phoning up other luminaries (who include New Line CEO Bob Shaye and actor Chris Evans, as well as a whole host of technical crew members) on their cell phones to make comment. It's a lively commentary, albeit one that feels slightly intrusive, as those called up share minutiae of what they're doing at the moment or what they're currently working on with their director/friend, seemingly forgetful that everything is being recorded live for a DVD. One of the most interesting points that comes out is that the DVD commentary was recorded before the film had even been theatrically released.

Cellular is never going to win any academy awards. But for a Saturday night popcorn movie, assuming you can latch onto its self-effacing, and at times too-knowing humour, it's perfect.

Cellular is probably not a DVD you're going to need to own, but it's certainly worth a weekend rental. Recommended!

Flood (2007)

Confusion abounds over whether Flood is a genuine British film that was released theatrically, or simply a direct-to-DVD unaired TV show. What can be stated with some degree of certainty is that in New Zealand it aired as a two-part TV drama, and that if it did get a theatrical release in the UK, it's probably only because somebody got carried away with how well another TV drama (aka The Queen) had done at the oscars, and assumed this might have similar box office success.

Whether the release to just one or two cinema's was a deliberate choice (to avoid the dreaded 'Direct to DVD' tag) or enforced by a need to be sensitive in a year that saw unprecedented bad weather hit Britain earlier this year, is a bit of a moot point, because unfortunately the 'film' has 'TV drama' rather than 'epic disaster movie' written all over it.

Perhaps the biggest giveaway of its TV origins is the cast. OK, so maybe Tom Courtenay and Robert Carlyle can be counted as movie stars, but they stand isolated from so many stalwarts of British TV series over the years that part of the problem with the film is the continual distraction of wanting to 'name the show this or that actor was last in'. I lost count after wasting too much time trying to remember 'Neil from the Young Ones', 'that girl who got raped in The Jewel in the Crown' or 'Inspector Poirot', as familiar faces appeared in quick succession in a never-ending series of cameos from the British TV acting establishment.

Jessalyn Gilsig, recognisable from bit parts in several popular U.S. TV shows, is brought in to help increase the chance of possible sales in the USA, and helps round out a strong cast that are in urgent need of a half-decent script.

It was standard fare in the Hollywood disaster movies of the 70's to have little in the way of 'character' or 'plot', because the emphasis was always on the big effects. But things have moved on, and without the big-budget effects available to Hollywood, the clichéd seen-it-all-100-times-before storyline just comes across as weak, uninspired and, by the time we've got an hour in and most of the CGI work has been shown, just plain dull.

The story, for what it is, centres primarily around three characters: Rob Morrison (Robert Carlyle with an accent that is sure it's British, but can't seem to make up its mind as to whether it's working class or middle class) is a marine engineer, still in love with the wife Sam (a Thames Barrier 'expert') who has been separated from him for several months. For added depth, the character also gets an estranged father who is resented for having spent too much time with silly ideas about the Thames Barrier not working, rather than at home nursing his dying, cancer-stricken, wife. It's exactly rocket science to work how these relationships are all going to pan out, given that 'unexpected' floods are suddenly hurling towards London, threatening to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Even if the character set-up we're given had been less 'do it by numbers', it's doubtful the characters would be any more sympathetic given the way they're pushed aside whenever someone somewhere has decided the 'film' isn't moving fast enough. Edits are fast and flashy, mainly one suspects to cover up the fact that there's so little money available for what we've really come to see here - those CGI shots of London under water.

The shooting style doesn't help either, featuring what looks like a poor imitation of the big American shows like 24 and Battlestar Galactica: all hand-held, quick-zoom, 'adjust the focus whilst shooting' nonsense that the Americans are currently in love with. If one switched into this DVD half-way through one could be forgiven for thinking one had turned on a recent episode of Spooks, albeit an episode with a higher-than-average budget for water tanks, if a lower-than-average budget for the script!

The biggest sin though appears to have been the rush to fit everything into two 50-minute halves for TV sales (as evidenced by a silly cliff-hanger exactly mid-way into the running time of the 'movie') which has made a nonsense of any sense of continuity and pacing. The first half tacks on a silly 'Scotland flooded first' to lure the viewers in at the start, meaning that the rest of the first 50 minutes has to be rushed to get to the cliff-hanger in time, and the second half drags to the point of utter tedium once the flood has finished doing its stuff.

As just one example of this poor editing, consider a scene where we have Carlyle's character refusing point-blank to even meet his father, denouncing him as a crazy lunatic with a deluded obsession that the Thames Barrier won't cope with any floodwater, only to then cut to a scene where his father is reporting via video camera to the government, with the suddenly reconciled-for-no-apparent-reason son appearing alongside him and speaking up on his behalf! It's a rather confusing mess!

All that being said, it's doubtful that disaster movie fans, who after all are the most likely purchasers given the way the DVD has been presented and marketed, will necessarily care about such things. The same vicarious thrills experienced on seeing The White House destroyed in Independence Day back in the 90's, can be experienced here again, with all the big London landmarks having their moments of CGI fame. And whilst the CGI work may not be up to Hollywood blockbuster standards, they're thankfully superior to those featured on the BBC's 'flag ship' (stop laughing at the back, there) Saturday night offering Dr Who.

The cast, as one would expect given the pretty heavyweight talent featured here, do a sterling job of trying to deliver the shoddy lines they've been given, and the various water tank scenes are very impressive, particularly if you make believe you're watching a British TV show rather than a 'real' film.

Picture quality is up to TV broadcast standards, and the sound too is acceptable, particularly when it needs to be expansive, during the big flood scenes.

Given the money that's been spent here (how will they make any of it back?!) one might have expected something some pretty decent material being available on the extra's front. It's clear that, in the action scenes at least, a lot of work was put in, and given the quality of the special effecs, along with the propensity of Soho FX house staff to talk endlessly and enthusiastically about their work, one might have expected quite a lot. Alas, all we get are a few tired sound-bites from a few of the main cast members and the producers, artificially split up by 'white text on black background' captioned questions. Annoyingly, the badly edited replies all fade out the sound before the picture, leaving actors with mouths moving but no sound before the next dreary caption appears.

If you live in London, or just fancy a bit of TV drama instead of yet another reality TV show, the DVD is probably worth a rental, if only to see some of our best British thespians at work, or to snigger at familiar landmarks being laid waste by water damage. But it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to sit through a repeat viewing, when so much of what's featured here seems to have already been shown on our screens many, many times before. It's not a terrible DVD but, when all things are taken into account one is forced to the conclusion that the characters are all too wet and that Flood is nothing more than a damp squib.