IMDb RATING
5.9/10
3.6K
YOUR RATING
A young woman attempts to end her criminal career. But she needs love to make it.A young woman attempts to end her criminal career. But she needs love to make it.A young woman attempts to end her criminal career. But she needs love to make it.
Elizabeth Ash
- Nurse
- (as Elisabeth Ash)
Kitty McGeever
- Judith
- (as Kate McGeever)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaOne of the reasons why Michael Caton-Jones quit the project was because Miramax head, Harvey Weinstein, nixed his proposal of casting Sophie Okonedo in the lead suggesting she wasn't sufficiently sexually desireable.
- Quotes
Alan Furnace: [first lines - at DJ mic] You grow up in the suburbs, you picture a life for yourself, right? A life of danger, late nights in smokey jazz clubs, beautiful women everywhere. There's Django Reinhardt with Le Hot Club De Paris, 1939 - you're listening to Night Duty in Saint Jose's hospital. Only then you do grow up, and you're not living that life. You're poor. You teach in a school during the day, and of course you like it. Though you can barely find time to play the bloody trumpet.
- ConnectionsReferenced in When Brendan Met Trudy (2000)
- SoundtracksBillets Doux
Music by Maurice Yvain
Lyrics by Saint-Granier
Performed by Django Reinhardt
Published by Editions Salabert
Courtesy of The Decca Record Company Limited
Licensed by kind permission from Polygram Film & TV Licensing
Featured review
All this useless beauty.
I love this movie like it's a woman. The reviewers have once again missed the ferry -- what we have here, folks, is an honest to God(ard) B-movie tone poem, an exercise in sensual, physical, SURFACE beauty that will send any self-respecting Keatsian aesthete straight to Hyperion ( the palace of visionaries, not the Miramax book division. ) Thanks to director Michael Radford -- who I wrongly assumed to be eighty or ninety years of age on the basis of his last movie, Il Postino -- B. Monkey is as seductive as the single bar of red neon that illuminates the opening shot. The movie will surely gain minor but devoted cult status in the years to come, while its lead actress, Asia Argento, will probably have to buy a house with very tall gates. ( Because I'm quite tall myself, and a good climber. )
How to describe B. Monkey without resorting to banal adjectives like you'd find on cartons of Haagen-Daz, "luscious" and "velvety"? Well, I see it as sort of a disreputable cousin to Bertolucci's ravishing Besieged; other people, no doubt less pretentious, will compare it to the kind of movie Steven Soderbergh has been making lately -- a cool, jazz-inflected, proudly inconsequential genre flick. But Radford has his own style -- impossibly trendy -- and he's a genius at evoking the loneliness and beauty of big cities everywhere.
This is a director's movie, to be sure, but make no mistake: Asia Argento is no slouch when it comes to decorating the frame. She's compact, tough, and fierce-eyed, her unconventional beauty only enhanced by a strong nose that would look terrific underneath a centurion's helmet. Like Louise Brooks or Anna Karina, she's a vamp for the ages, mesmerizing for no good reason ( much like the movie itself. ) It doesn't hurt that she's matched with the brilliant Jared Harris, whose interior performance perfectly complements her exterior one, or that the atavistically lordly Rupert Everett is on hand to do his Wilde thing. Even pretty boy Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is a bit more animated than usual; he throws open car doors briskly and with conviction.
Yes, the plot is inane. No, it doesn't really matter. B. Monkey, in the end, amounts to no more nor less than the sum of its impressionistic moments. The world is a glittering tomb where we all languish in oh-so-gorgeous isolation, or something. As Jared Harris says early in the movie, deejaying at a local hospital: "This next one is for all you romantics out there. Get well soon."
How to describe B. Monkey without resorting to banal adjectives like you'd find on cartons of Haagen-Daz, "luscious" and "velvety"? Well, I see it as sort of a disreputable cousin to Bertolucci's ravishing Besieged; other people, no doubt less pretentious, will compare it to the kind of movie Steven Soderbergh has been making lately -- a cool, jazz-inflected, proudly inconsequential genre flick. But Radford has his own style -- impossibly trendy -- and he's a genius at evoking the loneliness and beauty of big cities everywhere.
This is a director's movie, to be sure, but make no mistake: Asia Argento is no slouch when it comes to decorating the frame. She's compact, tough, and fierce-eyed, her unconventional beauty only enhanced by a strong nose that would look terrific underneath a centurion's helmet. Like Louise Brooks or Anna Karina, she's a vamp for the ages, mesmerizing for no good reason ( much like the movie itself. ) It doesn't hurt that she's matched with the brilliant Jared Harris, whose interior performance perfectly complements her exterior one, or that the atavistically lordly Rupert Everett is on hand to do his Wilde thing. Even pretty boy Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is a bit more animated than usual; he throws open car doors briskly and with conviction.
Yes, the plot is inane. No, it doesn't really matter. B. Monkey, in the end, amounts to no more nor less than the sum of its impressionistic moments. The world is a glittering tomb where we all languish in oh-so-gorgeous isolation, or something. As Jared Harris says early in the movie, deejaying at a local hospital: "This next one is for all you romantics out there. Get well soon."
helpful•288
- Delly
- Sep 15, 1999
- How long is B. Monkey?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Tehlikenin pençesinde
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $39,371
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $17,436
- Sep 12, 1999
- Gross worldwide
- $50,832
- Runtime1 hour 32 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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