Scene (TV Series) Stone Cold (1997) User Reviews

A Decent UK effort

[shinobiung · 6/10 · 12 December 2010]

This production was never meant to be a Hollywood cinema release, so why are you all trying to review like one.

It was made for the daytime UK T.V. A local station production.

It uses a few familiar faces from Brit TV. which I believe makes a film more entertaining, common actors do get type cast.

The film is meant to be a relaxing mid-night arm chair affair, not an exploding, hormone adrenaline Arnie flick. As such is does well to highlight the plight of the homeless in the UK. We think that it will always be someone else who will take care of things, but we all must do our part. We look past the homeless, the destitute, those worse of than us, hoping that we will never have to come in contact with them. That is until we end up in similar circumstances

this is crap, don't see it..

[harri_b · 19 October 2001]

(spoilers ahead, sorry..) i read the book *stone cold* in class and we watched the film to see how successful the adaptation was. and the adaptation sucked. frankly, this is one of the most dreadful pieces of cinema i have been unfortunate enough to come across. the acting is weak, pathetic and downright annoying, the settings waver between overdone realisticness and obviously cardboard props, and the script is the poorest i have heard in a looooong time. it starts when this boy (he's link, its not his name but its what people call him) falls out with his caricature of a stepfather vince, and goes to london. he spends all his money on renting this nasty little room owned by an evil guy who takes all his money and has a fake cockney accent, and is forced to make friends with another bum called ginge (ginger in the book, but don't worry..) then, durn durn durn, ginge disappears along with some other homeless types, but link for some magical reason has some money left so he buys this homeless girl gail a coffee or something and falls for her oh-so-sexy scottish accent and manky hair. and they make loads of money begging (yeah right) and they still have time to solve a great detective mystery concerning a psycho called shelter who kills people and hides them under the floorboards. in the end link doesn't die (shame), and gail isn't actually homeless she's a reporter and its all very sad but no one really cares because link is a boring bumpkin with a stupid accent. the end.

Not as good as the book.

[kiran-parry · 2/10 · 3 April 2009]

If you haven't seen the book you may find this movie okay but if you have seen the book you will find this movie pretty bad. I found this movie pretty bad and didn't enjoy it at all for a start that homeless boy in the book was 15 the one in the film looked older than 15 the arging in the family made this look like the Jeremy Kyle show or something the acting was bad the story plot was boring the story plot was very slow it took ages before the story plot got anywhere there was no twist in this film no good action.Also this had no visual effects this also had no good directing there was loads of bad points with this movie.

Poor...

[jake-mason14 · 3/10 · 29 October 2013]

After studying the book in English I thought that an adaptation of the novel could very easily be a good film because there is so much to work with such as; deep characters, cool and creepy locations and a debatable plot twist at the end of the film. I was very disappointed by this adaptation as it had poor acting from the entire cast, they all just seemed very tired and uninteresting and boring. The bad guy was no-were creepy and dark enough and you just cannot compare the books bad guy to the films bad guy. The film also just didn't get the point of the book which is the loneliness of the homeless and the isolation from society they get and must put up with everyday, the film however is just as simple as good guy, bad guy fight and has no power and determination as the book does.

In conclusion I think that "Stone Cold" is a very dull, slow and poor adaptation of a very good book that you should all read. If you have watched the film already then do not be put off the book because of how bad the film was

3 stars out of 10

Very strong acting. Really nice.

[Dries Gevaert · 7/10 · 15 August 2000]

(may contain some plot spoilers)

After reading the book on which this movie is based on ("Laarzen voor de Doden" in Dutch, I don't know the English title), I decided to watch this movie anyway (although it was almost midnight). The book was very good and so was the movie, but the problem with reading books before seeing the movie is that while reading the book, you form your own ideas about how the characters and locations look like and feel like. As a director, it's really hard to satisfy everybody who read the book this way.

The story is nice and very realistic. A young boy (he calls himself Link, you don't know his real name) runs away from home because of problems with his stephfather and ends up on the streets because he can't find a job. He gets to know the life on the streets with help of his new friend Ginge (named Ginger in the book), but then Ginge and some other homeless disappear, and you see they always had contact with the same guy (who calls himself Shelter) just before they disappeared. The book is told from two perspectives: Link and Shelter.

The movie only tells about Link, probably because otherwise it would be too complicated, but acting and directing are done so well you can see Shelter is doing something he shouldn't and that he's a psycho from the moment you look at him. Although there were some unnecessary scenes (like when he takes a little kid's ball at the playground), some wrong locations (Links first sleeping place, where he loses his watch, should be right across the train station), and the beggar scene with Gail that was way too long, there isn't much to say about the directing. Great camerawork too, but I'll talk about that later on. The movie was probably filmed in open air without any figurants (just people passing by who were being asked not to look at the camera but to keep walking), and that gives the movie a very realistic tint.

The first thing I noticed after seeing the movie was that the actors were really good. Although I imagined them totally different, they were really convincing. The guy who played Link was magnificent, he really got every detail right (even Links nagging voice), he reacted the way Link would react and was really good with the camera. He attracts attention only when he needs to, and I think the director and cameramen saw that. They help him by doing the same thing: only attracting the attention to the right things and movements at the right time. Because the camera is moving a lot, it gives to movie a smooth feeling, about the same feeling you get with the book. Really nice. The other actors are good too, with just one minor casting mistake: the one that plays the guy who rents Link the room. He acts like he is Rambo or Terminator or something, and that's kinda ridiculous.

In general, the movie reflects the feeling of the book very good and has a lot of great points. If you're in the mood for a good psychological drama, with a little local touch (the accent and the locations), you should see this movie. 9/10

Pointless bad ratings

[frankyclinton-91419 · 8/10 · 3 July 2019]

'm curently learing this novel and we've watched the film, to be honest I really liked it, I don't what all the fuss is about, people say that the acting is bad, but it's really not bad for a 1997 morning-afternoon uk tv programme, did you expect it to have the best hollywood actors, sfx and green screens. because I really hope not. You people should stop bashing on this show and that doesn't mean you can't give your opinion. My mum always said don't rant about something or someone if you know you can't do better