One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

... and about as much fun as a stale Colombo episode. I don't know about the original play but it appears much too stagey a story to be compelling from the start.From the very sluggish start I think I can point the finger at the adaptation. Deathtrap is utterly boring for about 30-45 minutes. Maybe if I hadn't read the premise I would have been a tad more patient but the setup really wears down the plot in the first act.The twisty second act is no more clever than a routine Agatha Christie whodunit. You are so well trained to think ahead of the characters by then that only the very ending can surprise you. And it is not really a surprise that lifts the lot above the pedestrian level of its trodden murder mystery snail-path.So Deathtrap seems to me as the inopportune adaptation of weak stage material. The cast do their best but they can't make up for the lack of effective tension, resulting mainly from too much direct talk about death and traps.

Deathtrap (1982)If you have seen "Sleuth," the first version from 1972 or so, you'll know what "Deathtrap" is trying to by. Michael Caine is not the only common thread between the two. Add to this a mysterious murder, a lot of coy double takes and visitors to a rich man's house with peculiar intentions, and a kind of play made into a movie feel, undisguised.It is fun in the background, it has a bright late seventies feel (I know it's from 1982, don't worry). But if you really pay attention, if you were even to have been in the theater and spent money to be engaged, you might well wish you had tried harder, and that the movie makers had tried a lot harder. There will always be poignance to seeing Christopher Reeve at his pretty and charming best, though he's pretty dull stuff here (compared to both "Superman" of course and the iconic "Somewhere in Time" from just two years before).Caine is pure Caine, hard to fault, and if you already like him you'll like him still. I do, and he made it sustainable. But the plot? Well, it's all farce to the point of not really caring what happens. Even "Murder by Death," with all its superficial plot twists, revels in being superficial--it's just "fun" all around. This one is not quite fun, nor is it as ingenious or beautifully written as "Sleuth." The source of "Deathtrap" is a fabulously successful Broadway play, and why it didn't quite transfer to film is something to argue about. Sidney Lumet is certainly a really capable director, with some classic films like "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Fail-Safe." behind him. What "Deathtrap" lacks for a director is true drama, however, and the finessing, the faking, the lighthearted coyness requires a certain sensibility not quite working here.I think the two women in the cast, the wife and the psychic neighbor, are both so caricatured they're hard to take, too. Add all of this up, and you have mostly the endless twists and surprises to keep you going--and again, "Sleuth" has it all over this one in that camp.Not that you won't be surprised! If you do watch it and hang in there, you'll be twisted and amused. Which is the main point.

Enjoyable if forced murder mystery whodunit kind of thing played to the max and beyond pretty much as a two-hander by Caine and Reeve. "Deathtrap" seems to try to send up every Agatha Christie - type concoction there's ever been, throwing in more twists than a Chubby Checker revival show, but seems to forget that Peter Schaffer's "Sleuth" got there before it a decade earlier.Caine's in on this of course, he now playing the Olivier role as the ageing dominating schemer of the two, with Reeve as the initially submissive but later resistant junior partner in the former's nefarious, ingenious if somewhat far-fetched plan to bump off ailing wife Dyan Cannon (who couldn't look healthier, as a matter of fact) and get his hands on her massive fortune.The initial twist is well staged and does come as a big surprise but subsequent events fail to repeat the trick and the insertion of the ludicrous Scandanavian medium Helga Ten Dorp (there must be an in-joke anagram in her name I've not yet deciphered) to sweep up the pieces with her thick-as-Nordic-snow accent takes it just too far over the top.For all that, it's directed at pace with no let up on the camp factor from the normally straight-arrow Sydney Lumet and features a slightly awkward full-on kiss between the leads with a complete lack of conviction on either side. It's one of perhaps too many unintentional comical scenes in this play within a play within...you get the idea, but you sense that no-one minds too much in any case, so irreverent is the whole concept and execution here.

I do not believe all the praise for this movie. The play and movie were a ripoff of Sleuth. Michael Caine wishes he were Olivier, and Reeves wishes he were Caine. Caine even had the nerve to do a remake of Sleuth with Jude Law playing his original part. Jude Law? You mean the one that did the remake of "Alfie"? This movie was made during a period of Caine's career when it was obvious he needed to pay off gambling debts. He would do anything for money. He would star in such award winning movies such as this, and "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure". What seems to be driving the praise for this movie is Reeves death. He deserves better than to be remembered for this lousy movie. And so does Caine. This movie can be found in the $5.97 bin at Walmart. Along with gems like "The Island", and "Blame it on Rio".