Alfie
Director: Charles Shyer
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 0.5
The Alfie of the 60's - played with menace and deception by Michael Caine - is brought back to modern day N.Y. with Jude Law, who's constantly 'punished' for his philandering be it in the form of difficult women who chop up produce while topless, genital lumps and youth-and-Absinthe-obsessed Manhattan socialites. It's a sloppy, wildly irritating movie, full of jump cuts and flash, billboards with key words pasted on them ("Desire"), Mick Jagger embellishing the lyrics and, like the original, plenty of sermonizing in front of the camera. I didn't like the misogynist Alfie of the 60's, but I really don't like the Alfie of the 21st century, who's trying to be decadent and use women, but is just a whiny, wounded flower himself. Caine's Alfie - a genuine, card-carrying prick - farts in the general direction of Law's Alfie.
