I loved this movie when I saw it on HBO in the Seventies. That's because I only caught the bedroom scenes where Flashman seduces an innocent German princess, who goes from chaste and unresponsive to eager and passionate in about five minutes. That part was absolutely fabulous!
But the whole rest of the movie was very, very bad slapstick, set ups that drag on for hours (the raid on the casino) and then payoffs that are all prat falls and silly pile ups. The humor is never funny, and adventure moves at a snail's pace.
Malcolm McDowell is legendary for playing brutal teen psycho Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, so I suppose someone assumed he'd be perfect for a cad, liar, and coward like Flashman. But it doesn't work, because where Alex just wants to rape, beat, and steal, Flashman has to keep acting like a horse's ass, saying stuff like "damme, an Englishman shouldn't have to talk to foreigners! Have the girl stripped naked and brought to my bed!" Maybe, fifty or sixty years ago, someone found it shocking and subversively thrilling to have a British officer talk like a stuffed shirt while acting like a teenage hoodlum on a rampage. But looking back it's just painfully unfunny, and McDowll is strangely listless in the role. It's not the violence that he can't sell -- it's the ham-handed social satire.
Flashman is a snob. We get it. Move on!
But the whole rest of the movie was very, very bad slapstick, set ups that drag on for hours (the raid on the casino) and then payoffs that are all prat falls and silly pile ups. The humor is never funny, and adventure moves at a snail's pace.
Malcolm McDowell is legendary for playing brutal teen psycho Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, so I suppose someone assumed he'd be perfect for a cad, liar, and coward like Flashman. But it doesn't work, because where Alex just wants to rape, beat, and steal, Flashman has to keep acting like a horse's ass, saying stuff like "damme, an Englishman shouldn't have to talk to foreigners! Have the girl stripped naked and brought to my bed!" Maybe, fifty or sixty years ago, someone found it shocking and subversively thrilling to have a British officer talk like a stuffed shirt while acting like a teenage hoodlum on a rampage. But looking back it's just painfully unfunny, and McDowll is strangely listless in the role. It's not the violence that he can't sell -- it's the ham-handed social satire.
Flashman is a snob. We get it. Move on!