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Blue Iguana

2/10

Stars: Sam Rockwell, Phoebe Fox, Ben Schwartz, Peter Ferdinando, Peter Polycarpou, Amanda Donohoe, Al Weaver, Simon Callow

Director: Hadi Hajaig

A frenziedly foul-mouthed action farce, full of wildly-exaggerated, eye-popping performances and centred (eventually) on the theft of a rare blue diamond from a Turkish museum. But this, alas, is no Pink Panther, or even Topkapi.

It dos have lots of shooting (and missing), with protracted and repeated shots of objects being shattered by bullets. When people do get shot, they seem to recover quickly unless they actually get blown up, soaking the rest of the cast in blood and entrails. Donohoe escapes all that by having her neck broken, but that would presumably be for bad acting.

Rockwell, who also executive produces (what were you thinking, Sam?) and Schwartz play a couple of parolees whisked from America to London by bespectacled Brit lawyer Katherine (Fox), who plans to wipe out her debt to a gangster (Polycarpou) by getting the pair to steal bearer bonds on the gangster's behalf.

But the snatch goes pear-shaped when someone tries to leap from a stairway and is killed. Now Katherine is back into debt, but plans to outwit the crime boss by getting her stooges (and two mates) to steal the titular diamond from the hood's mullet-sporting hireling (Ferdinando, gurning horribly in the worst of the film's many bad performances). From this, we should perhaps except Fox, who has to talk with her mouth full for much of the film, but manages to make her dialogue clear.

The script, however, is beyond bad and the result is often almost unwatchable.

David Quinlan

UK 2018. UK Distributor: Signature. Colour (unspecified).
101 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 3, Drugs 1, Swearing 3.

Review date: 03 Oct 2018