Fields of Gold (2002)

Best movie ever!

As Good As It Gets

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I can not think of a more chilling film. It is a pity that this movie is not available in the United States. I had the luck of watching it in a hotel room in London during a week long trip. I intensely admire the BBC for their intellectual programming. This film would almost never be shown on any American network, sadly. Yet it is a wakeup call to the world of the serious need for drug regulations to be tightened. It is perhaps the most serious call for action in the cellular science era. The warning contained in Fields of Gold cannot be missed, nor avoided by any stretch of the truth. Perhaps one of the most true-to-life depictions in the movie is the portrayal of dazed, confused, elderly people being raped by pharmaceutical companies. The film conveys a mistrust of drug companies I have not left behind in the 3 years since I watched the film. While the movie is admittedly terrifying to adults and children, having seen it when I was 14, the movie put into context many things that all citizens should know. I would wish that everyone could see and learn from this movie.

Do you know what farmers spray on fields ? That's right - Manure , so when the BBC decided to make a much hyped conspiracy thriller about GMOs and farming what we got was some of the smelliest manure the BBC has inflicted upon its audience !!!! SPOILERS !!!!FIELDS OF GOLD opens with a bunch of masked scientists in a lab where a female scientist ( According to the right on trendy BBC all scientists are women ) announces " A new strain of wheat that will save the third world from hunger " then the story switches to another equally bland scene . If you're going to make a thriller of any type shouldn't you open with a hook that grabs the audience ? DOCTOR WHO was brilliant at this as was THE X- FILES while 28 DAYS LATER opened with a hook that took place in a laboratory. I guess someone at the BBC didn't think this thriller needed a hook because the viewers had trailers stuffed down their throat for weeks in advance As the ( Not very exciting ) story continues a couple of journalists ( One's a drunken man with morals lower than Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush combined while the other is a female journalist full of virtue ) investigating patients at a county hospital who might be getting bumped off via " Mercy killings " . It's at this point things start getting confused as the female journalist is threatened by MI5 spooks and the first episode ends with the main MI5 spook getting murdered The second episode reveals that the patients at the county hospital have actually been dying due to being infected with a VRSA superbug . This is when things go totally hay wire . All throughout FIELDS OF GOLD the audience have been led to believe the intelligence services and the company shown in the opening sequence have been behind the deaths - But they're not . It turns out the bad guy is an organic farmer who has been manufacturing the VRSA superbug in his bedroom and the story ends via THE MATRIX camera work with the drunken male journalist setting fire to a field ridden with VRSA thereby spreading the superbug throughout the land I find it impossible to say a good word about FIELDS OF GOLD . At the time of its broadcast I was both a member of the Scottish Green Party and Greenpeace . I have since renounced my time in the environmental movement but even now I am somewhat offended by how environmentalists are portrayed here and to have the bad guy spreading a fatal genetically engineered virus as a warning to the dangers of genetically modified organisms is very silly. It's a bit like a CND member letting off a nuke in London to warn of the dangers of nuclear war . I was also slightly offended as to how the male characters were written as being bastards while all the females were highly intelligent and morally superior to men . There's also other problems with the script especially with regard to VRSA . If unlike the scriptwriters you take the time and trouble to research VRSA you'll find it's entirely different from what is seen here . Oh and if you set fire to diesel it doesn't explode like napalm . Perhaps the worst criticism of the script is that it resembles JEEPERS CREEPERS structure wise whereby the last ten minutes contradicts most of what has gone before . Where as JEEPERS CREEPERS only lasted about 90 minutes FIELDS OF GOLD lasted twice that length so is doubly irritating and illogicalAs a footnote environmentalism never makes a good theme for a thriller ( Anyone remember those Steven Segal movies ? ) and it's about time TV and film producers realized this

'Fields of Gold': Science fiction. For many commentators the science used here was nonsensical. According to the Independent newspaper, the Science Media Centre's director, Fiona Fox, was not impressed by this movie. "It's a fairly safe bet that if the authors of Fields of Gold, the drama about GM crops screened on BBC 1, are asked to produce a sequel to their "conspiracy thriller", they will write in a new role for a sinister, biotech-funded media centre. The real-life Science Media Centre (SMC) found itself cast in its own conspiracy by the drama's authors - Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, and his co-author and Guardian colleague Ronan Bennett - after a row about the plausibility of the science in the anti-GM storyline. In a series of newspaper articles and television interviews, the writers described the new SMC as a "lobby group" for big biotech companies, and accused the centre of orchestrating an ugly, secret campaign to discredit the programme and "dump on" The Guardian and the BBC. The truth about the SMC and its role in this story is less sinister" (quoting from the Independent newspaper). Rumour has it that Rushbridger later blocked Fox's sister Claire from writing a column in the Society (social services) section of his newspaper the Guardian. Subsequently Guardian gossip columnists ran a series of attacks and innuendos about Fiona Fox. Touchy...

Pseudo-scientific scaremongering rubbish, only made faintly plausible by Anna Friel and by Phil Davis's turn as a veteran journalist. The dialogue is crude and, once it gets away from the newspaper office, incredible.If an unknown writer had turned up at the BBC with this, he would have been shown the door sharpish.