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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Leslie Felperin

The Martini Shot review – Matthew Modine and a cast to die for can’t fathom an unholy mess

Matthew Modine in The Martini Shot
God-awful … Matthew Modine in The Martini Shot Photograph: Publicity image

Shot in Ireland, so at least the landscapes look pretty, this cuckoo-bananas drama stars Matthew Modine – rocking a white mop of hair and a bushy brush of fake beard – an American film director called Steve who is facing the end of his life. Or maybe he is God himself, casting souls in some indie-budget nonsense about a film director named Steve who looks just like him – or a deluded mortal who thinks he’s God who is fantasising all this on his death bed, or all those things at once.

Like the concept of the Holy Trinity, this is not easy for mere mortals to comprehend, but it has to be said that this is a mostly annoying and only fitfully interesting film. To give The Martini Shot the barest minimum of dues, it at least has a few fine actors in the cast, like Modine himself, Derek Jacobi, John Cleese, Stuart Townsend and, weirdly, Morgana Robinson (so great as Pippa Middleton in The Windsors). They help ease the tedium of waiting for this waffly, “spiritual” self-indulgent nonsense to finish.

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