The chances are, you know about this movie by now. The production schedule which meant that about 15% of it wasn't even shot, and the fact that somehow the director didn't notice this until he was in the editing room. The bizarre Val Kilmer cameo, and its terrible dubbing. The fact that Chloe Sevigny plays twins, for literally no reason.
None of that can prepare you for the experience of actually watching this thing. It's utterly baffling, to the extent that you have to wonder if everyone involved lost their minds while they were making this film. Characters speak in strange, stilted dialogue, as though English isn't their native language. Accents are parcelled out randomly - Fassbender does an English accent, Adrian Dunbar retains his natural Irish accent, Sevigny and JK Simmons try out something that's probably meant to be Scandinavian, while Kilmer was apparently dubbed by Tom Waits. Plot threads go nowhere, scenes are inserted for no reason, and there's a recurring theme involving the awful song 'Popcorn'. Toby Jones appears for thirty seconds, and is gone again. I spent much of the film sitting there going 'What?' over and over again.
At the centre of it all is Michael Fassbender, playing a brilliant alcoholic who's sometimes a detective. Actually, he's only sometimes an alcoholic, too - he has a remarkably ripped physique for someone who routinely wakes up on park benches. His topless shot is a five-second scene in which he stands at a window and looks a bit moody. He has several scenes like this, although in most of them he's wearing more clothes. At one point he wanders into a house and starts making donkey noises at a small child. Incredibly, that's only about the fifth most embarrassing moment in the movie. When the case is finally solved, the great detective Harry Hole (yes, really) solves it more by chance than anything else.
For all that, you have to see this movie. Here is a major movie, with big stars that was released unfinished into cinemas. You have literally never seen anything like this.
None of that can prepare you for the experience of actually watching this thing. It's utterly baffling, to the extent that you have to wonder if everyone involved lost their minds while they were making this film. Characters speak in strange, stilted dialogue, as though English isn't their native language. Accents are parcelled out randomly - Fassbender does an English accent, Adrian Dunbar retains his natural Irish accent, Sevigny and JK Simmons try out something that's probably meant to be Scandinavian, while Kilmer was apparently dubbed by Tom Waits. Plot threads go nowhere, scenes are inserted for no reason, and there's a recurring theme involving the awful song 'Popcorn'. Toby Jones appears for thirty seconds, and is gone again. I spent much of the film sitting there going 'What?' over and over again.
At the centre of it all is Michael Fassbender, playing a brilliant alcoholic who's sometimes a detective. Actually, he's only sometimes an alcoholic, too - he has a remarkably ripped physique for someone who routinely wakes up on park benches. His topless shot is a five-second scene in which he stands at a window and looks a bit moody. He has several scenes like this, although in most of them he's wearing more clothes. At one point he wanders into a house and starts making donkey noises at a small child. Incredibly, that's only about the fifth most embarrassing moment in the movie. When the case is finally solved, the great detective Harry Hole (yes, really) solves it more by chance than anything else.
For all that, you have to see this movie. Here is a major movie, with big stars that was released unfinished into cinemas. You have literally never seen anything like this.