Waste of time

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is easily one of top 100 favourite films, and having just watched it again last night I felt compelled to finally write a review on it.The casting is wonderful, the acting is superb, the script is involved but very well thought out and so it makes for an intelligent film, the scenery and camera work are excellent, the dialogue is subtlety written, and the film has a wonderful ending. So what's not to like?For me this is one of those rare films where scene after scene is memorable, and each for their own reasons. My favourite scene is probably the one where Caine confronts his boss by the pool: the respect the two have for each other is wonderfully portrayed and presented, and Caine's look up to the sky immediately following the encounter shows the stress he was feeling during the confrontation - beautifully written, acted and shot!!Bad points? Honestly, there ain't many that this reviewer can find. I guess Shephard's character may seem over the top, but she would have charmed me every bit as much as she did Caine, and so his interest in her feels completely authentic.Another issue for some viewers may be the subtle dialogue and involved plot, but that's always going to be an issue with an intelligent film.So why would I not give this film a 10 like I would Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, Charade, Lord of the Rings, or other classic masterpieces? Because those films all have some magic in them, and that's the one thing that Silver Bears lacks. It is superb in almost every way, but it lacks magic.To sum up, I regard Silver Bears as a highly underrated film, and if you appreciate great acting and intelligent plots, I reckon you'll really enjoy it.

Here's the prob. The book's a lot better. Paul Erdman invented the financial thriller with Billion Dollar Sure Thing and followed it up with this story. Inevitably, it's a 70s caper pic without the physical action. Not a great recipe but it works. The leads are OK. Michael Caine isn't given a lot to work with and Jay Leno shows he was right to take another direction. The supporting roles are much better filled. Joss Ackland and Charles Gray both deliver on cue and whoever plays Donald Luckman comes closer than anyone to the book. On the other hand, Cybil Shepherd's Debbie Luckman is nothing like the book. She's better! In the book, Debbie's a frustrated, embittered bitch. And not without reason but here, she's a suburban child escaping her boundaries but never breaking faith with Donald. Donald's going to be locked up and she's not about to abandon him. But Michael Caine's home is awfully close to the jail ...

"Silver Bears" has something in common with the "heist" or "caper" movies which were popular in the sixties and seventies, but deals with financial fraud and dodgy deals on the money markets rather than an actual robbery. It stars Michael Caine, who also starred in "The Italian Job", one of the best-known caper movies. Here Caine plays "Doc" Fletcher, a sort of financial troubleshooter for the Mafia. (Like most of Caine's characters, Doc is British; Caine has very rarely played an American in any of his films, "The Cider House Rules" being one of the few exceptions). Doc is sent by his boss, Joe Fiore, to buy a Swiss bank through which the Mob will be able to launder their ill-gotten gains.The plot is a complex one, involving not only the acquisition of the said bank (which turns out to be no more than a small office above a pizza parlour) but also an investment in an Iranian silver mine and various complicated financial transactions, not all of which are entirely above board. (The mine would explain the "silver" element of the title; the significance of the "bears" element remains obscure, even if one understands the word in its financial rather than its zoological sense).The late seventies were perhaps not the most distinguished period of Caine's career. In the sixties and early seventies he had made some excellent films in Britain ("Zulu", "Alfie", "The Battle of Britain", "Get Carter"), but he clearly felt that being a major star of the British cinema made him no more than a big fish in a small pond and he wanted to reinvent himself as a Hollywood star. Unfortunately, in his early Hollywood years he often seemed more like a small fish in a big pond and often found himself cast in some dreadful movies.Indeed, Caine himself has described three of the films which he made in 1978 and 1979, "The Magus", "The Swarm" and "Ashanti", as being his worst. (I have never seen "The Magus", but would certainly agree with him about "The Swarm" and "Ashanti", although I would argue that "Blame it on Rio" from the mid-eighties also deserves a dishonourable mention as one of his least distinguished achievements)."Silver Bears" is never as bad as something like "Ashanti", but few would count it among Caine's better films. Certainly, the star tries hard, playing Doc as a Cockney geezer reminiscent of Charlie Croker from "The Italian Job", but never makes him very likable. His leading lady Cybill Shepherd, who plays Doc's love-interest Debbie, was also going through a difficult phase in her career at the time, trying to prove, often without much success, both to the world and to herself that she was something more than Peter Bogdanovich's girlfriend and muse. (Both Caine and Shepherd were to see their careers revive in the eighties; he began to find roles in better films like "Hannah and Her Sisters" and she successfully reinvented herself as a TV actress in "Moonlighting").The film is sometimes described as a "comedy thriller", but I for one never found it either very comic or very thrilling. It lacks the action sequences which can make heist movies exciting, but it shares the main weakness of that particular genre, namely an unsavoury "crime does pay" attitude. None of the main characters seem to have any moral scruples, but none of them end up paying for their sins, apart from one unlucky accountant who is chosen to serve a jail term, largely as a scapegoat for the sins of others. Despite the best efforts of Caine, Shepherd and some other well-known faces such as Louis Jourdan and Joss Ackland, "Silver Bears" is little more than a tawdry movie about tawdry people. A piece of tarnished silver. 5/10

Complicated-to-the-point-of-derisory goings on; set in the less-than-fascinating world of the silver shares market, Swiss banks, crooked syndicate bosses and their schemes and so on. And on. And on. For at 110 minutes, this painfully protracted, alleged 'comedy' becomes unbearable as its visual jokes are repeated ad infinitum. The humour itself, although not exactly in the 'Road Trip' class of vulgarity, is unlikely to appeal to anyone over the age of 7. Everyone acts superfluously silly under the impression they are doing a good job, oblivious to their director, who is busy making some sort of jet-set Jacqueline Susannesque melodrama. Cybill has her work cut out as she frequently has to play the scenery as well as her designated role. The sort of film you may at least be able to laugh at, as opposed to with, provided you can drum up the enthusiasm to keep your eyes on the screen.