Coarse and misguided, Keith Gordon's film of the late Dennis Potter's own reworking of his intricate, dyspeptic, 1986 miniseries is a failure on every level. At the core of Potter's multileveled narrative lies pulp novelist Daniel Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) — Philip Marlow in the original — and "lie" is the word. Hospitalized with virulent psoriatic arthropathy that's blistered his skin and swollen his joints to immobility, the misanthropic Dark lashes out at the world with the only weapon at his command — bilious, cutting, hateful words. He rejects mind-numbing tranquilizers, so his restless mind, unmoored from any reality beyond the intersection of pai...
Released:
2003
Rated:
R
Length:
109 mins