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You're Dead...
USA/Germany 1999
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Aspiring bank robbers Eddie and Ian carry out a raid on Richardsons Bank in the City of London, aided by legendary safecracker Michael Maitland. A tip-off brings the police, led by Inspector Badger. The crooks take hostages and a nine-day siege ensues, resolved only by the intervention of Professor Corner, head of government special agency Cyclops. Everyone inside the bank is found dead, save for a frightened young woman named Jo Simpson. Under Corner's interrogation, Jo reveals what happened.
Twenty years earlier Maitland had been jailed for life after a casino robbery set up by Eddie's father led to the death of a policewoman. By promising to help trace Maitland's long-lost daughter, Eddie and Ian persuaded him to break out by faking his own death, to take part in their heist. The raid, secretly helped by embezzling bank manager Sefton, goes as planned. But three rival robbers - hypnotherapist Dr Chandra and his patients George and George - arrive, closely followed by the police. The gang take two customers hostage. Staff member Jo reveals she is an undercover policewoman and insists on staying. Eddie and Ian humiliate Sefton and shut him in the lift. As the siege wears on, those inside the bank are mysteriously killed one by one. Eddie quarrels with Ian and locks him in the vault where he hangs himself. Jo reveals to Maitland she is his daughter.
At this point in the interrogation Badger interrupts. He insists Maitland carried out the killings and died in the final assault. Declaring the case closed, he goes to the bank with his sidekick DI Guffin to purloin the loot. Both policemen are killed by the true murderer, the deranged Sefton, who had also killed Eddie. Explaining to Jo and Maitland - who has again faked his death - that it was Badger who shot the policewoman in the casino heist, Corner lets them both go free.
Review
"How can she possibly drag this story out so long?" demands bent cop Inspector Badger, watching an interrogation through a one-way mirror. "I'm no Einstein, but I already know the bloody ending." By this stage, three-quarters of the way through You're Dead..., the audience is likely to agree wholeheartedly. Most of the carefully devised revelations in Andy Hurst's script can be seen coming several miles off, despite the armoury of frenetic jump-cuts, flashbacks, flashforwards and misleading 'memory' sequences he tries to distract us with. For all its jazzed-up surface glitz, You're Dead... is essentially that reliable old standby, the heist-gone-wrong caper, tricked out with visual borrowings lifted from Austin Powers and A Clockwork Orange (1971).
Andy Hurst, whose only previous feature is the little-seen sci-fi thriller Project: Assassin, brings an exuberant eye to the proceedings, shooting in widescreen and indulging in some cheerfully overdone - and historically dubious - 70s flashbacks. But accuracy is beside the point: this is cartoonish stuff, and the fact that John Hurt looks rather older in his flares and shoulder-length wig than he does in the present-day sequences is all part of the joke. That the film, supposedly set in London, was shot mostly in Germany, and that the plot has rather more holes than a fishnet stocking only add to the air of zonked-out unreality.
Hurst's visual imagination is fertile and inventive. The opening sequence is especially striking: a nervous SWAT team edge cautiously, flashlights wavering, into the darkened bank, its Corinthian columns smeared with muck and spattered with bullets, with half-burned banknotes littering the marble floor while Robert Folk's mock-elegiac score swells on the soundtrack. (Seriousness is hardly on offer here, but a link between capitalism and violence isn't hard to find.) But the script lacks wit, and the attempts at verbal humour are mostly bludgeoning or misfire completely. A lumbering, surrealist subplot involving a Hindu hypnotherapist and his bumbling twin patients is tiresome and superfluous. The film's best gags are visual or aural: Inspector Badger's idea of the ultimate in torture is Tom Jones played at maximum volume.
As yet Hurst seems to have no idea how to control his actors. Most of the cast overact crassly, mugging and shouting their lines: Rhys Ifans in particular seems to be modelling himself on Adrian Edmondson at his most raucous. John Hurt gives his sketchiest performance in years, and only Barbara Flynn, as the head of the mysterious Cyclops agency, has the sense to underplay her role. Her quiet, watchful performance comes as a refreshing relief amid the surrounding hubbub.
Credits
- Producer
- Marco Weber
- Screenplay
- Andy Hurst
- Director of Photography
- Wedigo von Schultzendorff
- Editor
- Andrew Starke
- Production Designer
- Frank Bollinger
- Music/Music Conductor
- Robert Folk
- ©Atlantic Streamline Filmproductions, Inc
- Production Company
- Atlantic Streamline Filmproduktion presents a MarcoWeber production
- Executive Producer
- Rolf Engelhardt
- Line Producer
- Miggel Schwickerath
- Associate Producers
- Robin Hill
- Michael Hurst
- Jan Sebastian Ballhaus
- Production Executive
- Rachel Rose
- Production Co-ordinator
- Laura Einmahl
- Production Services
- Bernd Huckenbeck
- 2nd Unit Managers
- Michael Stritzel
- Christian Bufschmidt
- Unit Production Manager
- Markus Brinkmann
- Location Manager
- Mark Nolting
- 2nd Unit Directors
- Michael Hurst
- Robin Hill
- Assistant Directors
- Jan Sebastian Ballhaus
- Sascha Koszinowski
- Uta Seibicke
- Script Supervisors
- Sally Jones
- 2nd Unit:
- Birgit Jantsch
- Casting
- Celestia Fox
- 2nd Unit Camera
- Michael von Loeper
- Camera Operator
- Roman Zednicek
- Steadicam
- Roman Zednicek
- Bärbel Zibold
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- Henning Rädlein
- Digital Compositors
- Jörn Meyer
- Klaus Wuchta
- Moritz Gläsle
- Digital Artist
- Cania
- Special Effects Supervisor
- Karl-Heinz Bochnig
- Special Effects
- Christoph von Lengerke
- Dieter Littman
- Floor Effects
- Volker Lorig
- Art Director
- Florian Lehner
- Draftsmen
- Georg Burgner
- Markus Wollersheim
- Daniel Schroers
- Illustrator
- Michael Meier
- Storyboard Artist
- Ben Wheatley
- Costume Designer
- Jany Temime
- Costume Supervisor
- Wilfried Laudicina
- Wardrobe
- Philomena Boufis
- Additional:
- Bärbel Wendling
- Key Make-up
- Tory Wright
- Make-up Artist
- Antje Bockeloh
- Titles
- Blow Up Film
- Music Performed by
- The Munich Symphony Orchestra
- Music Orchestrators
- Peter Tomashek
- Jon Kull
- Andrew Kinney
- Robert Folk
- Music Supervisors
- Peter Afterman
- Associate:
- Margaret Yen
- Executive in Charge of Music
- Andrea Emmerich
- Music Editor
- Doug Lackey
- Music Engineer
- John Timperley
- Soundtrack
- "Rob a Bank (Wanna)" by Derek Greening, Peter Bywaters, performed by Peter & The Test Tube Babies; "The Hustle", "Night Walk" by/performed by Van McCoy; "You're Dead" by Andreas von Holst, Andreas Frege, T.V. Smith, performed by Die Toten Hosen; "King Kong" by David Brothwell, Richard Little, Paul Moody, Stephen Griffin, Patrick O'Sullivan, William Beavan, Andrew Starke, performed by Regular Fries; "Sitar Ecstacy" by/performed by Iwan Harlan; "Release Me" by Robert Yount, Eddie Miller, Bob Williams, performed by Engelbert Humperdinck; "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter, performed by The Edgar Winter Group
- Sound Mixer
- Eckart Goebel
- Set Sound Recordist
- Wolfgang Wirtz
- 2nd Unit Sound
- Marc Seiffert
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Andreas Biegler
- Sound Effects Editor
- Benedict Just
- Foley
- Artist:
- Joern Poetzl
- Editor:
- Natascha Baermann
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Mai Lin Tan
- Weapons
- Eberhardt Steep
- Helicopter Pilots
- Bernhard Hengen
- Klaus Müller
- Cast
- John Hurt
- Michael Maitland
- Rhys Ifans
- Eddie Hayderhall
- Claire Skinner
- Jo Simpson
- Barbara Flynn
- Professor Corner
- John Benfield
- Inspector Dick Badger
- David Schneider
- Ian Jeffries
- Roger Ashton-Griffiths
- Cliff Sefton, bank manager
- Patrick Field
- Detective Inspector Guffin
- Badi Uzzaman
- Doctor Chandra
- Andreas Windhuis
- Ted, security guard
- Andy Zingsem
- belching police officer
- Stephen Hudson
- squad leader
- Simon Paul
- Paul Smortions
- Jane Peachey
- Versuvius, Eddie's girlfriend
- Rayner Bourton
- Swedish Harry, Eddie's dad
- Mai Lin Tan
- undercover police officer
- Felicity Dean
- Eileen
- Tony Osman
- George 1
- George Osman
- George 2
- Alexandra Schalaudek
- Peaches, hostage
- Harry Wolff
- Ed, security guard
- Peter Kötthaus
- Bob, hostage
- Axel Holst
- cyclops guard
- Andreas Cremer
- policeman
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 8, 753 feet
- 97 minutes 16 seconds
- Dolby digital
- In Colour
- Anamorphic [Arriscope]