Rancid Aluminium

Somewhere in the midst of this chaos the seed of a comic film fails to take root. Joseph Fiennes plays an Irish accountant, who plans on stealing the family business off Rhys Ifans (Hugh Grant's appalling housemate in Notting Hill), by introducing foreign investment and arranging for Ifans to be assassinated.

The thriller element is destroyed by joke Russians, headed by Steven Berkoff, relishing the power trip, and Tara Fitzgerald, as his nymphomaniac daughter, who finds the goofy, gangly Welshman irresistible. Meanwhile, Ifans and Sadie Frost are trying for a child, introducing a more serious subplot, which almost scuppers itself when Ifans and his secretary have a quickie in the elevator.

There is sex, there is money, there is murder. What goes wrong? Just about everything. Fiennes uses Bob Geldof's voice and is seriously chilling, about as distant from Shakespeare In Love as it is possible to be. Ifans is the fall guy. He falls for Tara, he falls for Sadie, he falls for Joseph's treacle tones. He cheats on everyone and gets away with it. He's a kid and doesn't know any better. The film is so awful, it should be funny. It isn't.