Parting Shots

Judged purely on its artistic and dramatic merits, Parting Shots is a work of scarcely-believable awfulness - without doubt one of the truly worst films of the decade, if not all eternity.

It was so bad, in fact, that I found myself enjoying it enormously the longer it went on, lapping up every last line of excruciating dialogue and wondering quite how on earth the thing managed to get released. Truth be told, I'd sooner sit through this than Titanic anyday - the problem with bad Hollywood movies is that none of them seem to have any idea of their own awfulness, whereas Shots seems to positively revel in it and invites you to sneer at its own expense.

The hero, Chris Rea (that's not a misprint) may well have been deliberately chosen for his complete lack of anything resembling acting talent - I've always thought his music was terrible shite altogether, but my Lord, you want to see the guy's acting. He exudes all the charisma of an earwig, all the passion of a statue, all the glamour of his hometown (Middlesborough) - and it all adds up to even less than the sum of the parts, while he intensifies the effect by writing and singing the songs that form the film's soundtrack.

His character, Harry Stockdale, is a terminally-ill cancer-stricken everyman whose realisation of his imminent death prompts him to embark on a vengeance-driven killing spree against anybody and everybody who's ever done him wrong. He finds a viciously unlikely ally in the form of, eh, Felicity Kendal, and the plot bumbles gleefully along its leaden path for 98 minutes of jaw-droppingly dire dialogue and preposterous goings-on.

Without any trace of irony, I would wholeheartedly say this film is worth a look. Certain films (most recently Showgirls, Striptease and Spice: The Movie) have become immortal by virtue of their sheer ineptitude, and Parting Shots is every inch their equal. The viewer's patience takes a severe testing during the first few scenes, but once you've keyed into the film's own unique, eh, style, you're in for a treat of sorts.

In the words of the multi-talented Chris Rea: 'This is the road to hell.'