The Red Shadows

A film about big ideas that fails at almost every level. A cornball analysis of bourgeois ambition, a barely achieved critique of neo-liberalism. The jokes fall flat and the leitmotif of a group of actors attempting to revive Hamlet is risible. Worst of all is the final sequence; a group of post-Marxists discussing in the most hackneyed manner the emergence of money culture while Berlusconi, both the man and his ethos, take over. Oh! and the coda... the group of idealists carry on regardless. Oh dear. This is the type of film that pretends to seriousness because its central characters are thinkers. The problem is I can't tell if this is a satire about the pretensions of the metropolitan chattering classes or if it really finds these people interesting.