CASSANDRA'S DREAM

Woody Allen's would-be existential thriller is simply embarrasing, writes Donald Clarke

IN RECENT years the loyal Woody Allen apologist has, from time to time, been made to feel a little like a proselytiser for some deranged religion that requires the sacrifice of small furry animals. Mind you, though Anything Else, Scoop and Match Point all had prominent problems, it was still possible to identify surviving signs of the great man's genius.

No longer. Cassandra's Dream, a lumbering existential thriller set in LondonLand, is such a screeching embarrassment it's surprising the celluloid can make its way through the projector without curling up in shame.

Revisiting themes handled with considerably greater subtlety in his own Crimes and Misdemeanours, Woody seeks to investigate what happens to ordinary men when they do extraordinarily terrible things. Colin Farrell, surprisingly unconvincing as somebody who drinks too much, and Ewan McGregor, always useless as an Englishman, play working-class brothers with a taste for irresponsible living.

Twin dilemmas converge when Colin, who works in a garage, loses a fortune playing cards and Ewan, who runs the family's restaurant, becomes tempted by an offer to invest in a Californian hotel chain. Up pops a wealthy uncle, played by an uncomfortable looking Tom Wilkinson. He has a Faustean scheme in mind: if the boys will assassinate an enemy he will shower them with the required loot.

What makes the film so irredeemably awful? Well, the allusions to Greek tragedy - used to comic effect in Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, but intended seriously here - set new standards for thundering pretentiousness. (Their boat is called Cassandra's Dream. Get it?) The dialogue has a mechanical unreality that would better suit the lyrics of a Kraftwerk song, and the performances are consistently awkward throughout.

All this may, however, have been tolerable if the director did not exhibit such a tin ear (tin eye?) for the idiom, mores and social ambience of modern England. If Allen is to be believed, there are currently only two types of Londoner: those who drink at the Pig and Geezer and live off (literally) HP Sauce and shepherd's pie, and those who enjoy polo and call themselves (not quite literally) Lord Spiffington and Lady Jollyhat.

This is Allen's third film set in the British capital, but, for all the attention he has paid to the city, he may as well have been living among the Tuareg people of Burkino Faso. The director's next movie was shot in Barcelona. Expect bullfighting, flamenco dancing and the Spanish Armada.