CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Prismark10 The Shooting Party is an elegant, stately film with radical undertones very much represented by the John Gielgud's character.However this is James Mason's film, his final movie before his death and to think he was a last minute replacement for Paul Scofield who had got injured on set and had to pull out.Mason plays Sir Randolph who holds a weekend shooting party in his estate with fellow aristocrats from home and abroad. There are strict rules of conduct from the way you dress, the way you eat, the shoot itself and you conduct yourself in front of servants.What we see is petty rivalries, loveless marriages, discreet affairs and the foreign aristocrats showing an arrogance to the lower orders.The setting is Autumn 1913, they do not know it but it will be the last shooting season before the outbreak of The Great War. Sir Randolph senses that the country is changing but not yet realising at what great extent. Look at the sincere way he talks to Gielgud's pamphleteer who objects to the shooting and proclaiming animal rights. It is the servants and the lower classes who seemed to be more conservative and think things will always remain the same.The bird shooting scenes anticipates the slaughter that will follow in the trenches a year later, the tragedy that occurs signifies a change in the rule of the games and in the final credits we are informed that several of the characters died in The Great War.It is easy to dismiss The Shooting Party as another heritage film that was popular in the 1980s and 1990s. It has a bite to it as well as being uniformly well acted.

67pictures@eircom.net This is an extremely poor film. It is awfully self-conscious, with stilted dialogue that barely advances the plot and does even less in fleshing out the characters. The performances, for the most part, suffer from being restricted to stilted mannerism or speechifying and the whole thing lacks the sort of vigor needed to provide dramatic momentum. The photography is never more than functional, and at best the editing denies the film much needed energy, while at worst, it has all the subtlety of a sledge-hammer (note the scene in the dining room when one the characters says he thinks that a civilization is coming to an end and there is a cut to a log breaking in the fire). The score meanwhile, seems to have been lifted from a temp track and poorly mixed, and while the locations and costumes are absolutely authentic, you can only wonder what the likes of Merchant-Ivory would have done had they gotten their hands on it.But then, perhaps they would have passed. The whole story is so precious about itself and the passing of an age, it lacks the one crucial element that would have allowed the film to endure at least beyond its own age: a sense of humor. And I don't mean exclusively comedy. I mean a range of emotions: a SENSE of humor. The whole thing is so relentlessly and self-indulgently maudlin. It needed a lightness of touch, verbal wit, satire... in terms of cinema, what it needed to study was Renoir's masterpiece The Rules of the Game. That movie had everything: wit, motion, a sense of cinema, fully fleshed out and contradictory characters, each one of them flawed in their own unique but understandable way. What is more, Renoir made his film in 1939 as a contemporary commentary... and somehow, the comedic strain is one of the reason why that film is still considered a masterpiece.The Shooting Party is a film (based on a book) that appears to have taken at least part of Renoir's plot and then, although written in 1980, decides to push its time frame back to the eve of WW1. But even with that added view of history, it adds nothing to what Renoir achieved. On the bonus material for the DVD, we are told that it is a classic, one of the greatest British films ever made. Says who? The producer of the film? Claims are made that it broke all sorts of box-office records across the globe and was festooned with awards left, right and centre. It appears to me that the makers of that particular DVD documentary are almost as delusional and pompous as the characters in the film. At least when Julian Fellowes wrote Gosford Park, there was a self-awareness about the proceedings and so, the film has the confidence to send itself up at the same time. LIke all great Altman films, Gosford Park captures a moment when a culture shifted... and leaves you both regretful and grateful that the shift occurred. The Shooting Party leaves you wondering how on earth some people lavish it with such praise.

wulfstan Somewhere there should be a private museum dedicated to memorializing one of the most important vanished species-- the lady.While it is easy to see the fine acting of Gielgud, Mason, Fox and the other men, what no one has yet commented on is the equally fine work of a too-seldom seen actress... Judi Bowker.As Lady Olivia, she shows the compassion, consideration, perfect balance, and dedication of an Edwardian lady at her finest. She is not only a luminous beauty, but she is moved by a gallant and delightfully indirect invitation to adultery by Lionel, but does not succumb for her own reasons. She notices what happens to the children, she treats every other person in the film as an individual, and her unselfishness in no way detracts from her presence. Miss Bowker's subtle performance is well worth a careful look.THE SHOOTING PARTY is clearly an envoi to a vanished era. But in an age that can't see the difference between Melanie Wilkes and Scarlett O'Hara that was Margaret Mitchell's key contrast and thinks SEX AND THE CITY is a model for feminine conduct, Judi Bowker's performance is a revelation,

Ben Trovato Banal carnage. A nice allegory, just as a game keeper raises birds for sport so a social order, a decaying aristocracy, breeds masses for war. Trouble is these particular aristocrats ARE actually as boring as they are bored, and waiting around the whole film for the last minute is slightly tedious. A nap before tea is recommended. The atmosphere is perfect. Gielgud is great as an eccentric caricature -- when will a vegetarian be portrayed as anything but a looney in a movie? Mason is perfect as the button-down aristo so shocked that his shooting party should result in human death, so close to death himself. Is the movie too weighty from all the irony? I liked it, 7 out of ten.