Film Reviews by RL

A hugely disappointing, one-paced dirge of a film. I like Maggie Smith (who doesn't?) but even she couldn't save this. Essentially, what you get is the same scene regurgitated ad infinitum until a very silly ending. What are really little more than cameos from Jim Broadbent and Frances De La tour, are not enough to save this film.

Honestly, this could - and probably should - have been done in 15 minutes.

I just don't have the vocabulary to describe how bad this film is. Simply, it is the worst thing I have EVER watched and I really have seen some dross. Aaaaaaaarrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!

I was looking forward to this film, expecting some kind of social documentary, with a bit of wit and bit of bite with a plot that actually went somewhere and had a point. Instead, I watched 102 minutes of awful acting, not an ounce of credibility in any of the characters and just about the most pointless script imaginable.

It was made all the worse by the fact that (but for Antonia Thomas as 'Angela') there is not a single character in this film that you would want to spend even a nano-second with! Ricky Tomlinson and Lisa Stansfield have little more than cameos and what was Steve Coogan thinking?!

I very rarely bother with reviews, but this was in the bottom five of all the films I have ever seen - I could have easily summed this up with one, single-syllable word.

I enjoyed 'The Guard' immensely, so had high hopes for 'Calvary'. All I can say is 'thank goodness for the fast forward button!"

This film stumbles from one overly-long, disjointed scene to the next, with a total lack of reason or logic and, fatally, no engagement with the characters. While a 'snap-shot' approach can work, in this instance it fails.

Definitely one to miss.

It is the American way to overdo things, labour points and 'Disney-fy' every story they tell. This should have been a great film about a the depths that man is able to sink to and intolerable cruelty. Instead, it drags on and on and on and labours the most painful points so badly that you feel the film-makers are assuming you be too slow-witted to keep up.

Of course it won awards. It's a 'popular' subject these days and there's nothing like piling people on board the bizarre guilt-trip that we are all supposed to be on for things that we couldn't possibly have altered!!! Honestly, I think Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' packs more of a punch in reminding us of how brutally evil mankind can be.

As mentioned by another reviewer, this film fails in the way that 'Schindler's List' succeeds. With such bleak subject matter, why make it all so 'Hollywood'? Again, previously mentioned, the depiction of "pantomime white villains and angelic blacks" does the reality no credit.