Alas they did not pick a better director for this lovely sharp dark comedy. Instead of creating a real rhythm, to make us breathe in sync with Michael Caine's character, the director relies heavily on dumb voice-over narration as a weak device, a short-circuit actually, exposing the transitioning states of mind. Big fail: voice-over is ok when it gives you a neutral or unwavering narration. Here it implies that Michael Caine is basically an evil-mastermind who was barely waiting for its time to come. But that is not the - very engaging - story that we begin with, that of a genial, fair and efficient executive who gets pushed to the limit and understands he had been playing it too nice so far.
Basically we have a very immature director who only learned that a tilted camera can infer some impending evil in a most mundane shot, and a script which needed a skilled movie-maker and one superficial rewrite. As such Michael Caine saves the day, he is nice, congenial and affable when needed and switches to a more sombre and mischievous approach when suited. He just needed a better director to give more to his audience in the key moments where the movie just wants to cut to the next sequence.
In the end it is not hard to imagine why A Shock to the System went straight to video in most countries, including in Michael Caine's homeland! About halfway through the movie you feel everything is self-evident, then you get a little plot point to keep the story going that is sorely under developed so it comes to a let-down whereas everything should have been building up till the last frame.
Basically we have a very immature director who only learned that a tilted camera can infer some impending evil in a most mundane shot, and a script which needed a skilled movie-maker and one superficial rewrite. As such Michael Caine saves the day, he is nice, congenial and affable when needed and switches to a more sombre and mischievous approach when suited. He just needed a better director to give more to his audience in the key moments where the movie just wants to cut to the next sequence.
In the end it is not hard to imagine why A Shock to the System went straight to video in most countries, including in Michael Caine's homeland! About halfway through the movie you feel everything is self-evident, then you get a little plot point to keep the story going that is sorely under developed so it comes to a let-down whereas everything should have been building up till the last frame.