Quicksand (2003) Reviews

• Michael times two make it fun for you...

  yoav-12003-09-03

  "Quicksand", a film directed by the man who made the mighty "Long Good Friday", is about a million miles away from that film. It is an action movie in the vein of "The Fugitive", messily made with an average result from the two lead actors. While the movie has nothing much going for it, after renting it on DVD I must confess that I watched it 'till the end and enjoyed it's trashiness. So... if you've got too much spare time (like I do) and feel like a nice, B-movie night at home, you could do much worse than renting "Quicksand". Just don't expect another "Long Good Friday", maybe a "Short Trashy Monday".

• Better than your average international thriller.

  TxMike2009-12-01

  Michael Keaton is banker Martin Raikes. By his co-workers' descriptions, and by his own admission, he is a demanding boss and a thorough businessman. When his bank notices a rather large transfer of money, he decides to go himself to investigate, at a movie studio in Nice, France. When he gets there he meets Michael Caine, playing an actor, Jake Mellows. Jake has a gambling habit, often going into debt, but always figures his acting income will bail him out. Pretty French actress Judith Godrèche is Lela Forin, who works for the studio. Old Serbian actor Rade Serbedzija is a Russian Oleg Butraskaya running a not so legitimate business. These 4 main characters interact throughout the movie, and quickly Martin figures out the studio isn't really making a movie, but are a channel for laundering money from illegal operations, some of which involves kidnapping women and apparently selling them into sexual slavery. Plus, Martin gets very cleverly set up so that it looks like he murdered a key French official. What started out as an audit soon becomes Martin's scrambling for his life. I like Michael Keaton, he is an interesting actor who creates interesting roles. And, I really was mesmerized with Ms Godrèche, I love her accent when speaking English, plus she is nicely attractive. This movie is a bit better than its IMDb rating would indicate. SPOILERS: People who get close to the truth get murdered. They go after Martin but he is too smart. He has a teen daughter who lives in England with her mom and stepdad, and the bad guys kidnap her for ransom. But Martin outfoxes them and in the final scenes sets up a video camera sending a live streaming video to computers everywhere, showing the bad guys for what they are. He and Lela set up a production company, and seem destined for more.

• A Well-Rounded Movie

  kellieb-12006-02-14

  Quicksand is a great movie. I was pleasantly surprised by the film when I caught it on TV. It had all of the mystery, suspense and drama of a top-notch film, but for some reason it lacks the notoriety. It didn't have a series of car chases and crashes that most American movies display. One has to wonder if this is why it wasn't the commercial success it should have been. Michael Keaton and Michael Caine gave stellar performances, which were supported by a wonderful European cast. If you want to see a great movie with great actors and great footage of Europe, this is one of the best choices I can think of.

• A great film professionally directed and yet to be discovered

  ed562005-12-04

  Martin Raikes is a banker who gets way over his head with one of the bank's client a group which is used as money laundry for the Russian mob in France. What's wrong with you people? This film definitely has all action thriller needed. A top cast, great villains, beautiful leading actress just as the beautiful filming location and cinematography. Both Michael and Michael bring wonderful performances to the screen. Director John Mackenzie directs expertly and shows he hasn't lost a thing since "The long good Friday" (1980). After watching this movie I hope for 2 things: 1. That people will give more credit to this film. 2. That the film industry will keep bringing us excellent films like this one. This, along with Ronin (1998) are two of the few smart action/intrigue films we have had in the last years. This one rates 10/10. Highly Recommended.

• This film is a horrific waste of time, money and actors.

  R-Grant2004-12-22

  My summary says it all. This film is highly unpleasant in places (for example one theme is systematic rape; this is also shown at one point). It does not even make up for this by being remotely worth watching: the acting is appalling, and even Michael Caine and Michael Keaton cannot make up for the terrific lack of ability in terms of plot, script and direction. The "setup" of Keaton (Keaton walks onto his balcony and discovers a sniper rifle there; rather than leave it he picks it up, just as a police chief is sniped) is ridiculous; apart from being hideously contrived and formulaic, it also neglects to take into account brutally obvious factors such as motive and bullet trajectory analysis, not to mention the fact that only the terminally stupid would assassinate someone by standing up on a balcony incredibly close to that person, while holding a sniper rifle. At that range Keaton could probably have popped the guy with a pistol. The characters are drawn with big, big brush-strokes, the female lead is just appalling, and to top it off the final scene shows the vindicated Keaton back as a workaholic in his office, and the girl walks in, he smiles at her and she smiles softly back. Cut to credits. Yuck. Oh, and apparently a corpse blinks at the start, something to watch out for. And WHY do they have to get shot in the eye? And WHAT is that tattoo which the bad guys have on their hands? And...WHY set him up in the first place if you're gonna try and kill him anyway? Save your money, time and brain. Go look elsewhere.