I love Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon and Tim Roth. I also love revenge movies. This one was alot of work, and it was not enjoyable at all. The minute I saw Michael Gambon as this character I wanted him dead. With all his braggadocio I don't see MG's character being afraid or intimidated when presented with a cooked man. I would have been happier if MG's character had been boiled alive. Getting shot was just too easy. Overall this is just a dark, depressing movie. Visually it is beautiful the costumes and lighting are amazing, but sitting through it for two hours was just really not fun. And the pay off just left me cold. You want the audience to go YEAH! Instead I was praying for the end.

This must be one of the worst films i have seen. It rivals Brokeback Mountain as my worst movie experience. Such big hype and terrible, really terrible film. imagine going to the dentist and having a tooth out without any pain relief. That's what watching this film is like. Was with friends who thought it was wonderful i just wanted to leave as soon as possible. It's like being forced to listen to Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones. Murder, truly murder. If I was ever going to be interrogated, just show me this film and I would admit it straight away. Was fairly young when I saw it but I can still remember how bad it was. Maybe the sign of a good film, if I can remember it that long ago

This is easily Peter Greenaway's most famous film. This is despite, or most probably because, of its somewhat notorious reputation. Whatever the case, this has to be the most accessible film in Greenaway's highly inaccessible filmography. Although this is only a fairly relative statement because, despite having a fairly linear story, this is still very idiosyncratic and odd. It also displays the extremely cold tone that typifies this director's work in general. It could best be described as an art-house film with exploitation film subject matter. It contains all manner of unpleasantness, with physical brutality, humiliation, scatology and cannibalism; while it is sexually very frank with much full-frontal nudity and graphic conversations.So it's a very full-on film content-wise but what makes it very unusual is that it is quite uncommon for this type of material to be presented in quite the way it is here. Its visual style is thoroughly eloquent, with the cinematography of Sacha Vierney being particularly notable. Vierney is perhaps most famous for photographing Greenaway's favourite movie, namely Last Year at Marienbad (1961), a key experimental movie that clearly influenced him in many ways. Like that film, this one looks very lush too, with painterly compositions that are captured in widescreen by the carefully constructed tracking shots. The décor and costuming are both carefully considered, the latter are designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier; both give the film its own self-contained world that is very striking. The other key collaborator is composer Michael Nyman, whose soundtrack is again memorable but heavy going at times, with the high-pitched singing being a little hard to take. The actors do good work, although they are playing types as opposed to realistic characters; Michael Gambon certainly is in his element chewing up the scenery in his role as the obnoxious thief and Helen Mirren makes an impression in the tough role of his downtrodden wife.This is a film I like but with reservations. As always, Greenaway's style is very hard to fully embrace. The unpleasant aspects are slightly more sickening in some ways when presented in his deep-frozen style. While I believe that there is seemingly an allegory on Thatcherism in here apparently, I continually fail to detect it myself, so I simply take its events at face value. This isn't such a bad thing, as I do appreciate the self-contained world Greenaway has created and I do like his commitment to visual ideas. It's certainly a real oddity. It goes without saying but this film is categorically not one for everyone. It's easy to see why people hate it. But it will reward those that can take Greenaway's eccentricities.

There are people out there, who absolutely hate this film. I can run down a few names. I liked it when I was 20. At the end of it, I had to sit down for a half and an hour, getting over what I had just seen in the shocking finale of it, in it's near 2 hrs running time. Some people out there, just won't appreciate the film, as if it takes an acquired taste to like it. Gambon, in an unlike Gambon performance, which I still consider this to be his best work, plays one of the scariest mobsters in film, apart from Pesci in Goodfellas that same year. Oh bring on the nineties. Gambon owns this expensive, lavish restaurant. Just check out the loud sets and costumes. The dishes of food are too little, and aren't to everything's taste, although you haven't seen the final dish, a distasteful offering. Gambon just revels in this ugly character, going all out with it. He's a thug, bully, oaf, has no respect for woman, or mercy, when it comes to people owing debts. By example at the start, in an exterior shot, just outside the restaurant, one poor sod is being basted in faeces, left to wash himself down, amidst barking dogs loitering around him. We then pull away, pan across into the kitchen, some cooks shirtless, and they we come into the extravagant dining area. Gambon's wife, Georgina, played by the great Helen Mirren, back in the day, when she was much less known, is the butt of Gambon's abuse, physical and verbal. Gambon too, hates the fact that she smokes. Throughout the night, she keeps looking off, attracted to this average looking guy, loner, sitting afar, who likes to bring a few books to his dine ins. Gambon points out a harsh truth, when striking up a quick conversation with the stranger about lonely diners and their books. Soon this guy and Mirren are having a sexual affair, trotting off to the loos, every five minutes, and where ever they can do it, in secrecy, and when hubby finds out, he sees red. And in the finale, as concerning the last course, what goes around, really goes around. Watch out too for the fool of Gambon's gang, the fine Tim (pre Mr Orange) Roth as Mitchell, who likes to push Gambon. Judge for yourself, this film, especially lovers of visual cinema. It's up to you to have the final vote.