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Caine cuts up rough in
A Shiner
ccording to Michael Caine, Billy “Shiner” Simpson is the “roughest, toughest and most East End charac- ter I’ve ever played in my life.” He is also, laughs Caine, veteran of well ‘ard
classics like Get Carter and Mona Lisa, one of the “most vulgar.”
Shiner is a small-time London gangster and ambitious boxing pro- moter, a powerful and foul-mouthed old boy who, Caine explains, “is begin- ning to totter and crumble. Yes, he really is a very bad man.” When you discover too that this new £11 million British film features a story of family tensions, duplicitous daughters, treachery and murder, then something begins to sound classically familiar.
“Yes,” says Caine, matter-of-factly, “it’s based very loosely on King Lear.” His director John Irvin, whose previ- ous work spans award-winning TV (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Hard Times) and hard-nosed Hollywood (Next Of Kin, Raw Deal), confirms the Shakespearean connection.
“It’s about a family torn apart, about a man who overreaches and crashes and is destroyed by his own madness. What we are attempting here is an hon- est film – not a send-up, pastiche or even a homage. It’s truthful to its milieu which is boxing, but it’s not a ‘boxing film’, as such. It’s about family in the same way that, say, The Godfather, was not just about the Mafia.”
Supporting Caine, who recently won his second Academy Award for The Cider House Rules and was hon- oured with a Fellowship at the BAFTAs, is an intriguing cast includ- ing fellow Oscar-winner Martin
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