The Daily Mail is giving away free Michael Caine DVDs this week. Oooh, good-o, you might think. Now I can get hold of The Italian Job or Zulu without having to buy it. Sadly, you’d be mistaken.
A quick shufti at Michael Caine’s IMDB entry shows that he’s credited with more than 130 film roles – an astonishingly large body of work.
Sadly, however, a repertoire this big means that there are more than a few clunkers in there. For every Hannah And Her Sisters there are at least 10 ropey roles.
And to prove it, let me rattle off some of the DVDs that the Daily Mail is so generously giving away to readers this week: The Whistle Blower, Half Moon Street, Shiner, Without A Clue, A Shock To The System, The Statement, Shadow Run, Bullet To Beijing… the list goes on and, let me tell you, even the most hardened film buffs would be hard pushed to claim to have seen more than a couple of them.
Fortunately, Caine will always be remembered fondly for the roles that were successful, but I still wonder why he’s made so many crap films in between.
