No spoilers, even if it had a plot, because I turned it off before the end.Two things in The Shooting Party work extremely well: and both are castings against type. John Gielgud, the ultimate actor-luvvie, as an early hunt saboteur, and Gordon Jackson as a lairy professional poacher, when he usually did cap-doffing yeoman or butlers. I will say he suffers a bit of accent drift. The casting of James Mason, in his last film, as an aristocrat of the old school doesn't work because James, god bless him, does a sort of bank CEO turn (see Anthony Hopkins in Meet Joe Black), which is not the same thing at all. But that doesn't matter because this is the National Trust version of Brideshead Revisited.For the rest of them, it's the usual suspects playing at toffs, and they have a lot of fun with old cars, guns and billiard tables. Edward Fox, who was to stuck-up black-tie wearing waxworks what Burt Kwouk was to Japanese POW camp commandants, does it on autopilot and it shows. A special mention however for two of the absolutely worst child actors I've seen in a long time. Producer's kids, probably. Sorry kids, I hope you found gainful employment in accountancy later on.It's good that they have plenty to do at this country house, because as far as the audience is concerned, there's NOTHING GOING ON. Some will say that the film lyrically shows the imminent collapse of the English aristocracy on the eve of World War I; I say this film will tell you more about the collapse of the English film industry under the weight of poorly scripted son-et-lumière nostalgia masquerading as historical drama - the sort of thing Stephen Poliakoff does on TV, or used to before budgets got really tight.This, of course, is the point of The Shooting Party - it was trying to show upstart TV that UK cinema could do costume drama so much better in the 1980's. Unfortunately it was wrong. The 1981 TV version of Brideshead Revisited will tell you all you need to know about the decline of the English ruling class, as well as being a rattling good yarn. The Shooting Party isn't so much a yarn as a bit of tinsel.

I saw this movie in the mid-eighties on HBO one afternoon and never forgot it. I have not seen it again, but ever since then have repeatedly asked who might remember it. Very few do, which is a shame. My personal, perhaps self-centered measure of a movie is how well I might remember it. This movie is among the most memorable. I can still see the opening scene in my mind's eye, and vividly remember many other parts of it. There is a later scene that I recall in particular where Mason prays with one of his lower servants after the man is shot accidentally, and I recall how it moved me to hear Mason's distinctive voice working through the words of the prayer.I ordered the DVD today, and am very much looking forward to seeing the movie again. This was Mason's last film, and prophetically the theme of the movie is to chronical the end to the Victorian/aristocratic era on the English countryside. Accordingly, the movie is a very fitting tribute to the man, and certainly an enjoyable example of this style of film. If you loved Gosford Park, this is the earlier master.

If you remember Upstairs/Downstairs on PBS about the two different worlds in one house in London before the Titantic sailed and barbed wire and mass slaughter decorated the landscape of Europe,then this is a perfect accomplishment. Gordon Jackson who played the butler in the series is cast here as a poacher who gets hired to become a beater, someone who rouses the targeted wildlife in this case grouse I believe into the gunsights of the "swells". The English have a love- hate relationship with that time of determined inequality; James Mason in his last role, plays the lord of the manor,an intelligent patriarch of his ancestral holdings,several steps above the stereotype of a haughty inbred weasel satirized memorably by the Monty Python crew in their "Upperclass Twit of the Year" sketch. Mason is an aristocrat with a capital A who feels it is his DUTY to be the best not an entitlement. The others in this film range from starcrossed lovers he doomed to be a casualty of 20th Century warfare,the others representing snobs,fools, frivolous yet empty souled individuals who actually believed a little bloodletting would revitalize their spirits during the hunt and the subsequent war. While they may resent the foreigners for calling the ir English lackeys peasants it is how they treat them. Except for James Mason they are his yeomen the family's men at arms who probably followed his ancestors into battle when they raised a regiment of horse or foot for whatever struggle be it against the rival Europeans,killing rebel Scots or Irish ,or tangling with those American Cousins. Watch this film and see the difference between being a star and being an actor

While the whole film is beautifully accomplished on all levels, acting, directing, sense of time and place, the scene between James Mason and John Gielgud, which takes place during a shoot, reveals acting that has gone beyond acting. It is one of the most exquisite scenes in the history of the cinema. Mason and Gielgud are perfect.