Eye Candy #282 - "The Riddle"

The Riddle:  Wrapped in all the production values of a really bad, low-budget TV pilot, “The Riddle” is a ‘thriller’ devoid of thrills, suspense, or anything else promised in the ad copy.  Vinnie Jones, in his most unbelievable role ever, is a reporter looking into suspicious accidents at a construction site, while at the same time trying to locate an unpublished draft by Charles Dickens that people may be willing to kill for.  The dialogue is AWFUL.  Let me repeat that for emphasis:  AWFUL.  And you have to turn the subtitles on to understand what is being said.  The plot?  Mind-numbing.  It has an incidental soundtrack that sounds like it was cribbed from late 80’s/early 90’s action comedies (best part - a song apparently called “Sex“, whose only lyric is the word ‘sex‘ repeated over and over again, just in case you haven’t figured out what‘s coming up next).  And there are three EXCELLENT actors in this film: Jason Flemyng, Derek Jacobi, Vanessa Redgrave.  And they are completely wasted, with Jacobi having to act the parts of a series of bad hairpieces in multiple roles and Redgrave in a utterly thankless one.  Disappointing on so many levels, it even has the gall to be almost 2 hours long (!!!).   The first directorial effort from director Brendan Foley and unfortunately not his last.  Woodchuck sez, “Utter crap.”