Fresh and Exciting

The first must-see film of the year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Okay, I'm getting older and my hearing is not as sharp as it was, but that aside, I found the lead actors diction, tone, accent and overall sound reproduction frustrating. I barely understood half of what Jones said when he was on screen. What dialogue I did get was too predictable, rather like the entire plot line and scenes. This film could have been reduced to less than 90 minutes (it might have been more tolerable).Was this supposed to have been a love story? The woman's lead was so out of touch with reality that she seemed to be rather accidental to the entire film. The ending was absurd and wholly unworthy of Derek Jocobi. Charles Dickens would have been so upset!

Let me admit up front: I know the guy who wrote and directed this movie. I like to think I can be objective about it nonetheless, but in an effort to counteract any bias I might feel, I'll try to base this review (and my rating above) on two fairly objective factors.First, take a look at the cast list: Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, and Vinnie Jones. Think about how many movie offers each of them must have at any given moment. You don't get one actor like that (let alone three!) in a low-budget film made by an unknown unless they think there is something special in both the script and the director. Look, there's no reason you should care what I think about this movie--I'm just some anonymous guy on the Internet--but if Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, and Vinnie Jones think this film is worth their while, then you should probably pay attention to them.Second, at a time when the British film industry was in something of a slump, the filmmakers behind "The Riddle" not only made their movie (with an amazing cast), they got it into the hands of 4.5 MILLION PEOPLE. This would be an impressive accomplishment for any film, but for a quirky, ambitious indie movie, it's unprecedented. And as an aspiring independent filmmaker, I find that inspirational.

Well, I got and saw this movie based on the rather high score here (7.1 now), and some of the good reviews. Usually IMDb is a good guide when it comes to score, though in this case I was very much deceived.The movie is a present-day detective story, with Vinnie Jones as the investigator journalist, who investigates the death of a construction worker. Mixed with this is a made up Dickens' novel (called The Riddle, set in the 18th or 19th century), which also deals with a murder story. Both story lines are connected through the discovery of an unpublished manuscript.Sounds interesting? It could have been, however this movie horribly fails in a number of areas : 1) Acting. Mediocre at best, but it is watchable. No worse than your average UK sitcom, though for a movie one expects a little better. Especially with a score of over 7. 2) Music. The music used is simply horrible, it distracts and it is annoying. Especially the pub music, and the music which plays in the journalist's apartment. 3) Storyline. This is a big joke. There are gaping plot holes everywhere and even the obligatory love story is so unrealistic that it's almost funny. Furthermore, without going into any detail, I can safely say that the ending is absurd, and one of the worst pieces of acting and storyline of the year. 4) Camera-work. At times camera positions and views are distracting, and serve absolutely no purpose to the "story".I'm a bit of a movie fanatic, and watch on average 1 to 2 movies a day, but this is easily the worst movie I've seen in months. Don't waste your money or your time on this rubbish.

It doesn't surprise me that the makers of this hopeless movie couldn't find a UK distributor, and then had to release it as a free DVD with a Sunday newspaper. The distributors could clearly see what the film-makers and the Sunday newspaper couldn't, that this was one movie that just wasn't going to recoup its costs.Since it's a thriller about riddles, it would have helped if they'd picked a lead actor who could enunciate properly, rather than the mumbling Vinnie Jones who appears to pronounce "riddle" as "riell". And it would have helped if the dialogue hadn't been swamped by noisy locations or scenes flooded with distracting and inappropriate music. The plot is ludicrous: The lost Charles Dickens story supposedly helps our hero solve a series of modern murders, but so would a copy of Herge's Adventures Of Tintin, since the link between Dickens and Jones is more non-existent than tenuous. And we have the ridiculous premise that a would-be investigative journalist who lays his hands on a previously undiscovered Dickens manuscript, would take several days to read it, just so that flashbacks to Dickens can continue to be played throughout the movie, as if they had some connection to it. Which they don't. I mean, if you found a new Dickens manuscript, wouldn't you just go somewhere quiet and read it ? The film ends with one of those surprise revelations that have become mandatory since The Sixth Sense, but in this case it doesn't so much surprise you as insult your intelligence. If the film is suddenly going to turn supernatural at the twelfth hour, then revealing that Vinnie Jones is a robot might have been more acceptable. It might not have seemed so turgid if the film had been stylish, but it isn't. And in several places it appears decidedly amateur: There's a scene where a table is laid with a 60's jump-cut technique, but they haven't made sure that the person actually laying the table is completely out of frame between the cuts. Consequently, you can see things changing at the edge of frame, when you're really supposed to be watching things changing at the centre of frame. A good rule in movie-making is: If you don't understand how to do a technique then try something else.The real riddle is why anyone thought it would be a good idea to make this movie in the first place.