This is a solid professionally made "B" movie. The biggest names are Eileen Brennan and Cary Elwes, but they are secondary, albeit pivotal characters. It's the story of rival comic book dealers trying to score the biggest ever haul in valuable, vintage comics, and how they deteriorate from nice people into thieves and murderers. It's also the story of a boy becoming a man and a man finding his maturity, even if it is a dark and vicious maturity. It could be called a black comedy if there was anything funny about it. As I said before, the actors are mostly lower rung, but solid professionals. The characterizations are layered and all too human. The writing is intelligent. What more can you ask from cheap entertainment?

The first hour of this movie is absolutely priceless and will have you giddy. All the performances without exception are perfect. Donal Logue really stands out as McGillicudy, the pipe smoking comic store owner. Just watching him on screen will have you laughing. Pretty much everyone in the film is down on their luck and looking for some success to make their lives a little better. When they finally see the chance for greatness, they all go too far.The only false note is between the teenaged orphan and the old woman. Their friendship seems to come together a little too quickly, but really if they spent more time on this relationship it would not be an improvement since it's the most boring part of the story. It's a lose-lose situation. Later, when something bad happens to her the tears are a little too much considering they really hardly know each other.I also thought the film got perhaps a little too dark. At first some of the confrontations between the competing parties were hysterical, such as when McGillicudy smashes one of his rivals garden gnomes and then runs away. But pretty soon we have a body count and it just seems like it doesn't fit with the rest of the movie. Still, it's a pretty good ending. Well worth seeing if you've ever visited a comic book shop.

Being a comic collector, I looked forward to seeing this movie. For the first 45 min. or so, I really enjoyed it. But, then it turns in directions that are simply too extreme and melodramatic, too unbelievable. It also bugs me (as a comic collector, and as someone who's always wanted to work in a comic shop) that the comic shop owners who're obsessed with comics (well, with their monetary value, admittedly) are portrayed as people who can quite easily develop into psychos and murderers. I realize that Robinson (the writer-director) is saying that it's the reading part of the comics industry, and not the money part, that's the real and true value of comics, and this is certainly correct. But even this message doesn't come through with any power, because the comics fans in the shop are also misrepresented. Robinson has them talk about which characters are having sex with each other, and which female characters the fans would like to have sex with. This is not the kind of thing that people who're seriously into the actual stories talk about. Instead, it's playing up to the existing prejudices about what comic book fans are like.I feel that Robinson is spitting on people who consider comics their great passion. And this is just the kind of thing I'd expect someone like Robinson to do: Preach that one should never be a fanatic. People like that don't understand passion (Robinson should read Fantastic Four #285 to see it explained: people *live* through their passions, no matter what those passions are), nor the commitment to things greater than oneself. Robinson's prime comics work, Starman, chronicles a superhero who gives up being a hero so he can be a family man. That's exactly the wrong kind of priorities for a hero. Heroes help other people; they don't just care about their own lives. But then, British comics writers never really did understand what American superheroes are all about (giants like Alan Moore and Alan Davis frequently being exceptions, of course).My rating: 5 out of 10. With less melodrama, this rating could have been considerably higher.

This movie made the growing list of "worst movies I've ever wasted my life seeing." Not only is the writing complete sh*t, but the acting is so ridiculously bad in 99.99% of the movie and, of course, there's the fact that it barely makes any sense, logical or otherwise. As a friend of mine stated while watching, what it really needed was for the director to have decided either "hey this is funny, lets make it more comedic" or "hey this is serious, lets make it more dramatic," because he definitely was not able to pull of a "dark comedy." If you're reading this and you haven't seen this mediocre sad bastard-fest, then consider yourself lucky, and treat me as a god for saving you from seeing it. It isn't even like bad/good or bad/funny like some movies are (Jason X comes to mind in the latter case). If you have seen this and you liked it, I never want to meet you so don't email me; and if you saw this and you liked it and you want to try and make movies for a living, please save us the future hassle and switch to applying for a manager's position at a Blockbuster Video.Erik