Mack The Knife

MACK THE KNIFE, the new film version of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera," could serve as a textbook example of why film producers generally don't direct. Menahem Golan, of the Cannon Films Golan-Globus production team, has taken what may be the greatest musical play of them all and made an unequivocal botch of it. For those unfamiliar with the play, the story goes something like this: at the time of Queen Victoria's coronation, the streets of London are infested with crime and licentiousness. Polly (Rachel Robertson), the daughter of the Peachums (Richard Harris and Julie Walters), has engaged herself to marry MacHeath (Raul Julia), the dread...