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The Singing Detective 2003 123movies

The Singing Detective 2003 123movies

When it comes to murder, seduction and betrayal he wrote the book. Now he's living it!Oct. 24, 2003109 Min.
Your rating: 0
5 1 vote

Synopsis

Watch: The Singing Detective 2003 123movies, Full Movie Online – “While hospitalized with an extreme case of psoriasis, novelist Dan Dark reworks his first book in his head. Feverish, paranoid and prone to musical outbreaks, he confuses himself with his protagonist, a detective investigating the murder of a prostitute in 1950s Los Angeles.”.
Plot: From his hospital bed, a writer suffering from a skin disease hallucinates musical numbers and paranoid plots.
Smart Tags: #detective #writer #detective_novel #fantasy_sequence #hallucination #sadomasochism #using_others #timeframe_1950s #murder #book #1950s #plot #disease #skin_disease #musical_number #hospital_bed #bed #hospital #alternate_reality #vomiting #laughter


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Ratings:

5.5/10 Votes: 8,670
39% | RottenTomatoes
45/100 | MetaCritic
N/A Votes: 105 Popularity: 10.271 | TMDB

Reviews:

Comparisons with earlier version unfair
I saw this film as part of a process of educating myself about the career of Robert Downey Jr after seeing his remarkable performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and realising to my shame that I could recall seeing him in Chaplin but not much else. I have been working my way through his films and I am staggered at the range and depth of his talent, even in mediocre films (and he has made a few). But one can only agree with New Yorker critic Anthony Lane who wrote recently ‘I’ll watch him in anything’.

I disagree vehemently with those who’ve compared this Singing Detective unfavourably with the earlier version. I saw the original on television here in Australia when it was first screened, and it was indeed a great piece of television (though I preferred Pennies from Heaven which launched the international career of Bob Hoskins and was given a bad Hollywood remake). It’s important to remember that Dennis Potter himself wrote this script, specifically for a shorter film version, and was keen to see it made. The dissenters should rent the DVD and listen to director Keith Gordon’s commentary if they are in any doubt that it is faithful to the spirit of Potter’s intentions and his written word.

The casting of Downey is a stroke of genius. Because he is a younger and very attractive man, the gross disfigurement of his character with psoriasis is infinitely more poignant than when the part was played by Michael Gambon – even when the Dan Dark character is behaving like a total bastard. His performance is extraordinary: the sublety of his mood changes and facial reactions, and the pathos he draws out of this trapped character (without a hint of schmaltz) just leap off the screen (even more remarkable given that for some of the time he was wearing makeup that took hours to apply and initially caused a bad skin reaction;and that he was under threat of returning to jail on drugs charges, which is why the film had to be shot in LA rather than Chicago – he was not allowed to leave LA).

I guess Downey’s messy private life is one of the reasons he’s such an interesting and complex actor. One can only hope that other brave producers will take a punt give him the big meaty parts that his talent deserves.

Don’t let the nay sayers dissuade you from seeing this film; it’s great. Mel Gibson is (thankfully, for me) unrecognisable and the scenes between him and Downey are terrific. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent.

Review By: gapple-3
Time is not on our side
If it weren’t for the original TV series I fancy that this version of Dennis Potter’s ‘The Singing Detective’ would be regarded as an unusual and interesting film, maybe with something of a cult following. But inevitably it is compared to the original series and can’t help but shrivel in its illustrious presence.

So why remake the 1986 TV series as a feature film? The original is one of the best works ever made for TV and it runs to almost seven hours. It could be that the producers wanted to bring the piece to a wider audience and that is laudable, but the time constraints mean that much of the original narrative is stripped away and with it goes most of the emotional power, leaving a peculiar and spare story about a bitter, misogynistic man who is hospitalised with psoriasis and who is haunted by feelings of guilt concerning the death of his mother. This means that fresh audiences of the story will probably see it as a piece of rather clichéd psychodrama made interesting only by its visceral dialogue and quirky dream sequences, rather than as the masterpiece it is.

Maybe if the producers were really committed to the work they would have added another 30 minutes to the film to give it a better chance of success as a work of art. I suspect a half-hour more running time wouldn’t have saved it but it would have allowed more material from Dan Dark/Philip Marlow’s childhood to be included, for that is where the emotional core of the work lies. The fantasy sequences are meaningless without reference to the real emotions that Dan Dark has left behind. This lack of context drains the film and its characters of meaning and it is left just being quirky and slightly interesting; a sort of puzzling crime scene. The question being: who stole the story’s soul, and where has it been stashed?

In parts, RDJ’s performance is very good (he excels hamming it up as the fictional detective of the title), but in parts it slips, and generally the acting comes across as more mannered than the British TV original (makes one appreciate just how great that cast were). In particular Mel Gibson , in dodgy prosthetic comb-over, is rather grating.

The finger-prints of the Hollywood studio can be found all over the cinematic crime-scene. The songs should have stayed in the 1940s. Shifting them to the 1950s seems like an attempt to make them have more commercial appeal and perhaps allow RDJ to look a bit more cool when lip syncing – which rather misses the point of the songs. He gives the game away when he actually sings a song over the end credits – I bet Dennis Potter didn’t put that into his screen adaptation – more likely it was RDJ’s agent. It has the effect of eradicating any lingering sense that you’ve been watching a drama. Of course by the time the credits are rolling you’ve already been served up an ending even more anodyne than the problematic ending of the original, with RDJ strolling out the hospital looking like he’s just got back from a two-week vacation in Florida.

There are some well crafted scenes but ironically the film looks rather small and studio-bound compared to its TV predecessor. I think this is partly because of the originals’ brilliant direction by Jon Amiel. It was shot in film often in wonderful locations such as the Forest of Dean and so even cinematically it was a hard act to follow.

So many considerations make one realise what a doomed artistic enterprise this was. Potter was at his most brilliant when writing about the things he was most familiar with, especially the Britain of the 1940s and 1950s with its repressive class system, and his childhood in the Forest of Dean. Removing this cultural setting (along with 5 hours of complex interwoven imagery) renders The Singing Detective impotent. I can’t help but think he knew this – and I’d also like to believe that any adaptation he handed over was hacked to pieces in the making of this film. It may also be that he wanted to leave an extra financial legacy to his family, and handing over his most celebrated work to Hollywood was the best way of accomplishing that end.

My plea to first-time viewers of The Singing Detective is: do not be put off by this feature film version. Please, please watch the original! It’s breadth is enormous and it will make you think and weep like the best art should.

Review By: travis_iii

Other Information:

Original Title The Singing Detective
Release Date 2003-10-24
Release Year 2003

Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 49 min (109 min)
Budget 8000000
Revenue 337174
Status Released
Rated R
Genre Comedy, Crime, Musical
Director Keith Gordon
Writer Dennis Potter
Actors Robert Downey Jr., Robin Wright, Mel Gibson
Country United States
Awards 1 win & 3 nominations
Production Company N/A
Website N/A


Technical Information:

Sound Mix Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera Clairmont Cameras
Laboratory FotoKem Laboratory, Burbank (CA), USA
Film Length 2,994 m (Sweden), 3,000 m (Italy)
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm

The Singing Detective 2003 123movies
Original title The Singing Detective
TMDb Rating 5.234 105 votes

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