Dull and frequently inept caper film is never suspenseful and often seems to make little sense. Caine is a veteran criminal who kills numerous people, seemingly for no other reason than to show what a dangerous bastard he is and to make the audience fear for the life of a chubby kid that the movie keeps cutting to. Film stars out with said chubby little boy stumbling across a van with blood dripping out of the back. Caine pops up. warns the boy menacingly that he didn't see a thing, gives him a twenty pound note and sends him on his way. The boy promptly goes to school and tells everyone he comes into contact with what he saw, but since he's prone to exaggeration and tall tales nobody believes him. Of course, since there's no indication that Caine cleaned up the crime scene and since the film takes place not in a big city but in a more remote part of England, you would think something would turn up to corroborate the boy's story. Things just get worse from there. Initially the scenes in Shadow Run seem so disconnected I thought the director was filming out of order ala Pulp Fiction. Nope. Michael Caine's character is at the heart of what's wrong with the movie: he's a vet thief that who seems to kill someone in cold blood every twenty minutes or so. At one point he admonishes a confederate in the next job for trying to figure out a way to pull off the robbery without killing any innocent people. What kind of thief wants to kill if it isn't necessary? If Caine were some twenty year old hothead you might be able to buy it, but a man in his late sixties? It hardly seems likely that Caine's character would live as long as he has or that anyone would want to work with or hire such a psycho. His character isn't believable and neither is this boring and dreadful film.
