Barbarians at the Gate (1993)

No, don't adjust your browsers/inboxes: this is not an erroneous double posting! This time I refer to the HBO telemovie based on the book which I recently read.

As you'd expect from a movie which wasn't even aspiring to a cinematic release, the cast is not quite A-list: we have James Garner hamming it up as affable the affable RJR Nabisco Ross Johnson, Jonathon Pryce (whom you might remember as the IRA leader from Ronin -- "oh we'll get the case, won't we Gregor") as private equity maven Henry Kravis, and a bunch of other faces to which I can't put a name to but whom I have seen in countless (usually minor) roles over the years. Hilariously, a young Dean Norris (later to become Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad) puts in a brief appearance as a hapless RJR lab rat working on the doomed Premier smokeless cigarette project.

I won't sugar coat this one: it's every bit the slow, mediocre, by-the-numbers telemovie you'd expect it to be. Don't watch it unless (a) you've just read the book and are curious, (b) you can't/don't like to read and want a synopsised version of the story, or (c) you're a hopeless insomniac and have reached the stage where you feel that desperate times call for desperate measures.