Shock to the System

1990 black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After being passed over for a promotion and relentlessly nagged by his wife, that character Michael Caine always plays decides to start killing people.

This isn't effective as a satire on the dog-eat-dog business world as you might expect, but it's a fairly entertaining dark comedy. Caine is pretty great, playing the character mostly straight with just the right nuances. The screenplay unfortunately has him developing this weird catchphrase lifted from Disney's Cinderella about halfway through, and that makes it harder to root for this character when the fact that he was murdering people who he saw as obstacles failed to make it hard at all. The version I watched had some dubbed-over "fucks" when it should have actually been more concerned with saving my ears from having to hear two similar puns that had to do with being shocked. I groaned the first time, and I wet myself the second time.

Once again, Michael Caine plays somebody who appears to be irresistible to females. Ladies, is that really the case? I need to know.

There's great tension created in a scene featuring a lighter.