There's stabs of humour along the way, Caine a natural at this of course, and he even gets a young love interest in the form of the unbelievably cute Lizzie McGovern.

From beat down Milquetoast to ruthless killer with a glint in his eye, Caine plays it to perfection. A Shock to the System is an under valued film on his CV, a brilliantly constructed black comedy that finds Caine effortlessly shifting through the emotional gears. His success ratio as per great films and performances to bad films and tired performances probably stacks up as 1 in 10, consider this, in this same year he made Bullseye! What we do know though, is that when he gets it right he knocks it out the park and thus makes all his bad films easy to forgive. By his own admission Michael Caine has readily done films just to pay the bills or build a new house. Graham Marshall (Caine) is once again overlooked for promotion and once again his harpy wife (Kurtz) belittles him.Then a heated exchange at the train station results in the accidental death of a beggar, and he gets away with it, something which gives Graham some devilish thoughts, one of Satan's light bulbs ignited above his head. Music is by Gary Chang and cinematography by Paul Goldsmith. It stars Michael Caine, Elizabeth McGovern, Peter Riegert, Will Patton and Swoosie Kurtz. A Shock to the System is directed by Jan Egleson and adapted to screenplay by Andrew Klavan from the novel written by Simon Brett.

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