The “hopeless” movie Roger Ebert hated every minute of: “Oh, this film angered me”
Most people have the benefit of being able to change the channel, turn off the TV, or leave the cinema once they realise they hate the movie they’re watching. Sadly, critics don’t have that option because that’s the job, which left Roger Ebert seething by the time the credits rolled on a film he couldn’t stand.
Of course, anyone who wants to earn a living analysing and dissecting almost every major release to roll off the production line will be fully aware there’s going to be as much chicken shit as chicken salad for their viewing pleasure, and having claimed that he reviewed over 10,000 of them during his career, Ebert was forced to sit through an awful lot of garbage.
While he would occasionally trash an inarguable classic or defend a cinematic trainwreck to the death, he generally didn’t stray too far from the consensus. Sometimes, a bad movie is a bad movie, and there’s nothing anyone could do about it. When he sat down to experience Guy Ritchie’s Revolver, though, Ebert ended up wishing that he hadn’t bothered.
It was a strange time in the filmmaker’s career, with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch establishing him as one of Britain’s brightest up-and-coming auteurs, spawning countless imitators in the process. Then came the whole Swept Away debacle, and his first feature since the infamous Madonna vanity project ran the very real risk of disappearing entirely up its own pompous arse.
Describing it as “a frothing mad film” in a 0.5-star review, Ebert was of the belief that Revolver “seems designed to punish the audience for buying tickets.” On the plus side, not many of them did, with the nonsensical and traumatisingly convoluted thriller barely recouping a quarter of its budget at the box office.
In an attempt to inject the formula that served him so well across his first two films with a philosophical angle, Ritchie conspired to create something borderline incomprehensible. It was only the fourth entry in his filmography, but the vultures were already circling, wondering if the geezer who cracked the mainstream was already a busted flush. He wasn’t, but Revolver hardly helped his case, especially when critics like Ebert were calling it “hopeless.”
“Oh, this film angered me,” he raged. “It kept turning back on itself, biting its own tail, doubling back through scenes with less and less meaning and purpose, chanting those sayings as if to hammer us down into accepting them. It employed three editors. Skeleton crew.”
How much did Ebert loathe Revolver? So much so that he wouldn’t have minded had the whole thing caught fire inside the projector during his screening, saving him a world of hurt and misery. “Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves,” he added, before signalling his preference for filmic arson instead of watching it. “If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer.”
It goes without saying that he didn’t have a good time at the movies, and if it wasn’t for Swept Away being so utterly horrendous, Revolver would comfortably be Ritchie’s weakest film by far.
