Friends & Crocodiles

TV Movie
2005
1h 49m

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Damian Lewis in Friends & Crocodiles (2005)

"Friends and Crocodiles" traces the changing relationship of maverick entrepreneur Paul Reynolds and his assistant Lizzie Thomas over a period of 20 years from the beginnings of the Thatcher... Read all"Friends and Crocodiles" traces the changing relationship of maverick entrepreneur Paul Reynolds and his assistant Lizzie Thomas over a period of 20 years from the beginnings of the Thatcher era to the bursting of the dot.com bubble."Friends and Crocodiles" traces the changing relationship of maverick entrepreneur Paul Reynolds and his assistant Lizzie Thomas over a period of 20 years from the beginnings of the Thatcher era to the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
The title refers to a baby crocodile that main character Paul owns. Paul says he thinks something can be learned from crocodiles because they survived the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Quotes
William Sneath: Paul collects people that interest him - and then lets them do whatever they want. And now he's collected you.
Lizzie Thomas: No. I'm just the secretary. That is quite different.

Connections
Followed by Gideon's Daughter (2005)

User reviews27

Review

Featured review

Incisive and prescient

One of Stephen Poliakoff's most interesting films, I was very glad to catch up with it recently (via Netflix DVD).

He manages to not only present a most unusual variation on screen love stories, this one about a deep but platonic relationship among co-workers but also encapsulates the key societal changes in recent decades in novel fashion.

Most impressive to me was how Poliakoff zeroed in on technological changes on society and the strange but made understandable social trends of late. The hippy era thinking that has since been replaced by right-wing emphasis on selfishness/materialism is beautifully shown in many of the characters, principally Damian Lewis's anarchic business whiz. The current turmoil of "creative destruction" and how it affects one's job security is brilliantly analyzed.

Even technological progress and fads are cleverly shown, as in the Shark Tank styled pitch session for "electric books", pre-Kindle. All that's missing in the auteur's prognostication is the smart-phone mania that has set in just a few years after shooting in 2004.

One side note is how Damian Lewis's madman in business character presages his current starring role in TV's "Billions" -quite a different character, yet this BBC TV Movie certainly could have served as his audition for the later role.