Customer Reviews
A disturbing movie with extraordinary acting - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 19 Jun 2007 
Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson) was a night club hostess in one of London's private clubs. It was a Spring evening in 1954 when David Blakely (Rupert Everett) walked in with some friends. Little more than a year later, Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of Blakely. The movie tells the compelling, tawdry, almost inevitable story of what happened.
Ellis was divorced & living with her young son above the club she helped manage. She bleached her hair, knew how to keep men laughing & buying, & was definitely not part of the upper class system. Blakely was a race car driver, wealthy, young, selfish, had the right friends, & had never had to face any real responsibility in his life. With some mixture of lust & need, the two of them instantly became entangled in each others' lives. "Where do you live?" he asks her. "Over the shop," she says. "Can I take you home tonight?" "Yes." Their affair follows a pattern. First lust, then tears, abuse, his forgetting her for a while, her desperation, & lust again. She has one friend, Desmond Cussen (Ian Holm). Cussen loves her but is the type of man who can't quite get up the nerve to kiss her, much less invite her to bed. He trails after her & tries to pick up the pieces. Cussen knows the kind of man Blakely is. "Why can't you leave him alone," he once shouts at Ellis. "He's so involved with himself he can't think of anything else." The results are predictable. Ellis slides further into misery & fixation the more Blakely takes her for granted & forgets about her at times. One night she takes a pistol, follows him to a pub, & when he leaves she carefully puts two bullets in his chest.
The trial was a great event in Britain. It had everything: sex, the class system, a tawdry affair. The legal system couldn't deal with her fast enough. The trial started June 20, 1955. She was hanged July 13. Ruth Ellis was the last woman hanged by the British.
The movie is excellent & the performances are extraordinary. Rupert Everett was 26 when he made the film. He's perfect as the product of a privileged system, so selfish as to be cowardly, so self involved that he misses entirely what he is doing to Ellis, or even care if he did realize. Miranda Richardson at 27 carries the movie. Her performance made her a star. I can't describe what she does except that every word she says & every step she takes just rings true. She is utterly mesmerizing.
This is, in my view, one of the movies that can probably be callled great. You'll be thinking about it for some time. The DVD picture looks fine. The only extra is an alternate ending, which is disposable.
Unpleasant Nostalgia Item - By: ianrmillard, 19 Apr 2006 
The main characters of this film of a true story (of the last woman to be executed in the UK, in Summer 1955) are Ruth Ellis, a nighclub hostess & her boyfriend, a spoilt young would-be racing driver, played by Rupert Everett (think an even more sickenly pathetic Hugh Grant). He beats her, drinks, beats her again & then finallly ignores her. She endures the beatings but not the cold shoulder. Meanwhile her son & her more decent boyfriend or sugar daddy endure her behaviour. The film does show her as what she must have been like, largely a silly hysterical & obsessed creature (and the film does not shrink from showing that she shot the Everett character several times, finishing him off on the ground with a heart shot) but is, overalll, disappointing as drama, to my mind anyway...
Miranda Richardson at her very best. - By: S. Hapgood, 01 Dec 2004 The film-critic Pauline Kael once complained that the problem she had with this film was that Miranda Richardson never stops ACTING in it. (Though quite what else she's supposed to do when appearing in a film is a mystery!). I think she was getting confused with the character. As the nightclub hostess of a seedy London dive in the 1950s, Ruth Ellis would have been putting on an act for a lot of the time anyway, & Richardson, with her hilarious mock-BBC accent & arch mannerisms, was bringing that to life superbly. Her attention to character detail here is superb. She has splended support from Rupert Everett (in those far-off halcyon days when he simply acted, & stopped trying so hard to be a camp icon!) as David Blakely, & Ian Holm has a quiet dignity as Desmond Cussens, Ruth's devoted & downtrodden admirer. I have seen this film many times over the years, & it impresses me each time. This is well worth seeing.
Astoundingly Good - By: Lovborg, 09 Aug 2002 This film will blow you away. I have NEVER seen such a brilliant piece of storytelling where every element is flawless: a magnificent script, perfect design & direction & acting that will blow your mind. If you ever see a finer performance that Miranda Richardson's Ruth Ellis, then you are a lucky, lucky person - this isn't acting, this is re-creation & it is astounding to watch. She is brilliantly matched by the great Ian Holm & (for once) Rupert Everett acts his socks off & provides a blinder of a performance as the man that Ruth that loves & eventuallly murders. See it: you will NEVER forget it.
The Best Film Ever Made in my opinion - By: , 07 Jan 2001 I am a huge Miranda Richardson fan & have seen collected every film she has appeared in but this does not cloud my judgement of this film. It is a very moving story about the last woman to be hanged in Britain. The acting on most accounts is excellant & Miranda Richardson excells in cleverly portraying the frame of mind that the young woman was in. Never, have I watched a film so many times & failed to see the repition. The film completely mesmerises & sweeps the viewer up with the rollercoaster of emotion.
