A Shock to the System (1990)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is not a black comedy. It's not an anything comedy. There's not one funny, or even remotely funny, thing in the movie. It's an extremely boring and ultimately depressing movie about one of the most unlikable protagonists I've ever seen in a movie. In fact, I disliked every character, including the constantly smirking young girl who is unbelievably attracted to a guy old enough to be her grandfather. In fact, virtually every event and every character in this film were totally unbelievable, including a police detective who acted about as much like a detective as a turnip acts like a palm tree. Note to the sound mixer, it is amateurish and extremely annoying to have the music louder than the dialog. SPOILER ALERT -- The most depressing thing about this movie is the ending. I hated this guy and the only reason I kept watching was to see how he got caught, arrested, shot, killed, whatever, but -- SPOILER -- he doesn't. He does all these awful things and succeeds, and smirks, The End. Give me a break. One star is too many.

If any movie exemplifies the pitfalls of the upwardly mobile 1990's, it this movie here, A Shock to the System. It glorifies, yet vilifies, the face of corporate mobility, the infighting, the shifting loyalties, the costs and what it really takes to make it to the top.There are undeniable elements of dark humor in this movie. The other reviews are testament to this part of the movie. There is more social commentary present. Corporate attitude and disparity in the social classes are plainly set out and exhibited. This can be seen in the many portions of the movie where Caine the corporate warrior walks past homeless people camped in the streets of New York. The superficial camaraderie and brutal, smiling infighting of corporate life has rarely been better captured on film.The movie features the music of Gary Chang played by the Turtle Island Quartet, which adds to the bittersweet atmosphere of this film.The topping of this movie is the acting of Michael Caine. Caine brilliantly portrays a corporate officer who has been turned down to a promotion. Through machinations and scheming, he covets the higher position and eliminates everyone in his way. His acting in this movie is a gem in a long and stellar career.

Michael Caine receives "A Shock to the System" in this 1990 black comedy also starring Swoosie Kurtz, Elizabeth McGovern, John McMartin, Will Patton, and Peter Riegert. Caine plays Graham Marshall, a New York ad exec on the verge of getting a huge new promotion as the company changes hands. Alas, the promotion goes to a younger man, Robert Benham (Peter Riegert). Frustrated and miserable, as Graham waits for the subway, he gets into a fight with a beggar and pushes the man, who lands on the tracks as the train arrives.When Graham realizes that he probably committed murder and doesn't feel any different, he finds that murder is a great solution to some of his more vexing problems and starts dispensing with people one by one by various means. Then his involvement with a young woman (Elizabeth McGovern) leads to danger.This is the blackest of comedies with a great performance by Michael Caine who manages to seem very likable throughout. Caine plays the role very seriously, as he should, and lets the humor come out in his actions. Peter Riegert as the new boss is someone you'd like to slap silly, and Swoosie Kurtz does a fine job playing Graham's annoying wife.Recommended.

I'd love to know if the part of Graham, the droll-voiced, rage-repressed Brit, confined to a suburban Connecticut prison and a Madison Avenue job he secretly loathes, was written especially for Michael Caine. It really could have been, and not because he does such a fine job with it.No, "A Shock To The System" is really a much more British-type thriller than an American one. It is extremely dark, remorseless in its cold-hearted execution of moral-less morals and it laughs in our face at every confounding expectation.Graham is all about pent-up anger and we love him for that. When the promotion he has been banking on for several years falls through the cracks to land in the lap of a sycophantic, smarmy Yuppie (played smoothly by the effortless Peter Riegert, looking very young here), he decides he's had enough, and concocts a fiendish scheme that's so brilliant and manipulative, it just might work.Another reason why this film strikes me as so un-American is that it is really all about the suspense, not the pay-offs. It keeps a deliciously taut tension throughout that's so well executed, you really forget there are few really jarring moments (save one, that makes the entire picture worth watching).And not just Caine is well cast. Liz McGovern has her long-overdue leading-lady performance and bags it effortlessly. Similar strong support to Swoosie Kurtz who plays Graham's ditsy but demanding wife with such bubble-headed ease that its difficult to hate her; Jenny Wright, who always brings a nicely fresh ingénue quality to whatever role she plays; Will Patton, whose stern, no-BS attitude makes him a formidable adversary to Graham's misdeeds; but most of all to John McMartin, whose portrait of a virtuous but increasingly apathetic executive will ring bells in many people's heads and hearts.The ending is a bit of a cheat, but you'll live. The movie as a whole will resonate as clearly as Gary Chang's wonderfully pensive score, rendered flawlessly by the Turtle Island String Quartet.