To me, this movie is perfection.

Admirable film.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In this off-beat thriller, Michael Caine plays a very unhappy man. He's frustrated with his wife, Swoosie Kurtz, bogged down by expenses and problems with his house, and he's desperate to get a promotion at work. When his friend and coworker John McMartin gets sacked and Peter Reigart gets the promotion instead, Michael loses it.I'm a pretty big Michael Caine fan, so this wasn't the best choice of film for me to watch. He plays someone who basically has an undiagnosed nervous breakdown and acts out in psychotic ways. He narrates the film and refers to himself in the third person, hallucinates, and plots the murders of those around him. I prefer to see him in dreamier roles, but if you don't mind him shouting and acting like an evil lunatic, you'll be in a better position to appreciate the movie.A Shock to the System is a very dark comedy. As dark comedies aren't my preferred genre, I didn't really end up liking the film. In the spirit of fairness, I put myself in the shoes of someone who does like this genre, and for those with a more sardonic sense of humor, it's probably very entertaining. There's a side love story with Elizabeth McGovern, lots of tension when Michael Caine is plotting his schemes, and twisted humor running throughout. Those who feel out of control of their lives will probably really like this flick.DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not your friend. There are strobing lights and active camera movements that might make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

Michael Caine plays advertising executive Graham Marshal, who is shocked to learn that he has been passed over for promotion in favor of Robert Benham(Peter Riegert) an ambitious subordinate that Graham can't stand. Enraged, he sets about to enact his revenge by murdering all those who stand in his path to success, starting with the wife he doesn't love(played by Swoosie Kurtz), and romancing a young female subordinate(played by Elizabeth McGovern) who becomes his unknowing accomplice. A police Lt.(played by Will Patton) is convinced that Graham is responsible, and sets out to prove it, though Graham may prove to be too clever for him.Michael Caine is quite sympathetic as the wronged man, and viewer may feel guilty rooting for him to get away with it! The detective reminded me of Peter Falk's Columbo, only less brilliant; certainly the film's outcome would have been different if adapted as an episode, since that series also had a few "sympathetic" murderers of its own...

Director Jan Egleson's corporate revenge thriller "A Shock to the System" is the kind of movie where evil trounces evil. Michael Caine is cast as a career-minded adverting executive with a wife and a mortgage who is in line for a richly deserved promotion. Everybody believes that he will get his promotion, including his wife who like to short out their home electric system with her stair master exercise machine. Unfortunately, Graham Marshall (Michael Caine of "Funeral in Berlin) learns to his chagrin that he has lost his promotion to another company employment. The humor underlying this big business melodrama is as hopelessly amoral as the protagonist is murderous. Caine is a genuinely evil. He winds up killing his way to the top of his advertising firm. A family man who rides a commuter train to work in New York City in the morning, Graham isn't pleased about losing his long-sought affair promotion. The first half of the action is slow-going, with lots of exposition, but Egleson ramps up the action considerably during the second half. Our hero Graham Marshall"), isn't pleased when a younger man, Robert Benham (Peter Riegert of "Animal House"), lands the promotion. Caine has to kiss ass while Benham takes the company in a different direction. Meanwhile, Graham is having trouble with his wife, Leslie (Swoosie Kurtz), and her infernal stair-master machine. Virtually, every time that she uses the exercise machine, the stairmaster shortens out the electricity and Graham has to reset it. He gets the surprise of his life when he is shocked trying to reset his breaking box. In short, Graham kills his wife as well as several more corporate big-wigs until he ends up running the business. "A Shock to the System" is a ghoulish bit of nonsense that doesn't wear out its welcome at 88 minutes.

I'd love to know if the part of Graham, the droll-voiced, rage-repressed Brit, confined to a suburban Connecticut prison and a Madison Avenue job he secretly loathes, was written especially for Michael Caine. It really could have been, and not because he does such a fine job with it.No, "A Shock To The System" is really a much more British-type thriller than an American one. It is extremely dark, remorseless in its cold-hearted execution of moral-less morals and it laughs in our face at every confounding expectation.Graham is all about pent-up anger and we love him for that. When the promotion he has been banking on for several years falls through the cracks to land in the lap of a sycophantic, smarmy Yuppie (played smoothly by the effortless Peter Riegert, looking very young here), he decides he's had enough, and concocts a fiendish scheme that's so brilliant and manipulative, it just might work.Another reason why this film strikes me as so un-American is that it is really all about the suspense, not the pay-offs. It keeps a deliciously taut tension throughout that's so well executed, you really forget there are few really jarring moments (save one, that makes the entire picture worth watching).And not just Caine is well cast. Liz McGovern has her long-overdue leading-lady performance and bags it effortlessly. Similar strong support to Swoosie Kurtz who plays Graham's ditsy but demanding wife with such bubble-headed ease that its difficult to hate her; Jenny Wright, who always brings a nicely fresh ingénue quality to whatever role she plays; Will Patton, whose stern, no-BS attitude makes him a formidable adversary to Graham's misdeeds; but most of all to John McMartin, whose portrait of a virtuous but increasingly apathetic executive will ring bells in many people's heads and hearts.The ending is a bit of a cheat, but you'll live. The movie as a whole will resonate as clearly as Gary Chang's wonderfully pensive score, rendered flawlessly by the Turtle Island String Quartet.