Kubrick's oeuvre was never more lavish, ravishing or brilliantly eccentric than in his 18th Century story of pugnacious Irish chancer Barry Lyndon, a man with a talent for money and appearances, but with a crippling lack of love in his heart. Ryan O'Neal plays a young Irishman condemned to a life of wandering after he shoots an English officer in a duel over the hand of his cousin, whom he loves. Soon down on his luck, he enlists in the British Army to fight the French, deserts posing as an officer, is forced to enlist in the brutal Prussian army, becomes manservant to a card-sharp chevalier and a professional gambler himself. Not so much a war film as one man's personal battle to become a bona fide member of the aristocracy.
Buy the DVD > Read the review >
