Kafka

Stars: Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune, Dead Ringers, The French Lieutenant's Woman), Theresa Russell (Cold Heaven, Whore, Impulse), Joel Grey (Cabaret), Sir Alec Guiness (Star Wars, Bridge on the River Kwai, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India), Ian Holm (Alien, Brazil, Hamlet, Naked Lunch), Jeroen Krabbe (The Prince of Tides, Crossing Delancey, The Fourth Man). Following his smash critical hit sex, lies and videotape, director Steven Soderbergh's second film is a lethargic homage to early modernist Czech writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Incorporating elements of Kafka's The Castle and Letter To His Father, along with thematic ideas lifted from Terry Gilliam's much-superior Brazil and Carol Reed's classic The Third Man, Kafka stars Jeremy Irons in the title role as a mild-mannered clerk in a bureaucratic insurance agency. Shot in black & white for the first two-thirds, the snail-paced story follows Kafka's efforts to find out what happened to a fellow office worker who mysteriously disappeared. His search leads him directly to another exceptionally bad performance by perpetually pouty sexpot Theresa Russell and a ring of vague revolutionaries who are preparing to storm the castle. Literally, since the "castle" is the name given to the monolithic hub that governs the insurance agency (and into which many poor souls enter and do not return). The final twenty minutes of Kafka bursts into blazing color and features sets and scenes inspired by Brazil, but it's (a derivative) too little, too late. In the final analysis, good acting (excepting Russell's) and Soderbergh's strong visual sense cannot overcome a script that is utterly lifeless. Watchable as an oddity; but also a major disappointment. Audience: Film buffs. Thriller fans won't like at all.