Flashbacks of a Fool

Whiile pic doesn't exactly feel like a vanity project, its weak script might have kept it forever in development hell if debutant writer-helmer Baillie Walsh weren't the topliner's good buddy.

Flashbacks flounders in the final third.

The bizarre secret isn't nearly interesting enough to justify the long buildup to it, and since it amounts to bad luck it doesn't really reveal anything about the actor, anyway.

Without Daniel Craig's 007-enhanced profile, it's unlikely that Flashbacks of a Fool would have appeared anywhere except the Netflix queues of his most rabid fans.

While the dialogue is often hackneyed and full of rushed backstory (not enough flashbacks, evidently), the cinematography excels, particularly the chiaroscuro interiors.

Fatally, Craig's self-obsessed Joe never develops into anyone more interesting.

If you go into this viewing knowing what the story gets right, it’s easy to appreciate the English quaint and harrowing lessons.

Charismatic Daniel Craig plays Joe Scott, a washed up movie star, addicted to a misspent life of sex, drugs and uncool behaviour

... an uninspired rearrangement of familiar elements, with little emotional force to justify the entire project.

Craig does a hopelessly dissipated futuristic Bondish has-been celeb party animal, undone by an overload of hard drugs and sex orgies in a flash forward culture clash of Hollywood excess and soapy UK downhome family values.