Director Randall Miller
Starring Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman & Chris Pine
Rated M
Score 5/6

The story of the early days of California wine making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as “Judgment of Paris”.

I sat down to watch Bottle Shock, certain that I had watched and even reviewed it previously for the blog, though when I went to the vault looking for the original review I could not find it. So unfortunately there will not be a link to the original review. For those of you who might be wondering, ‘what brought me back to Bottle Shock?’ I stumbled across it in the free movies section on YouTube. Now considering that this is based on a ‘True Story’ if you look into the facts about the movie you will find that Steven Spurrier (the man portrayed by Alan Rickman) has questioned the accuracy of the script.There was an interview with Bo Barrett (the man who was portrayed by Chris Pine) said the movie is more of a dramatization. With that out of the way I originally went into this knowing nothing about American wine and now I still don’t know much about American wine but at least now I have tried it.
Bottle Shock is a fun movie to watch, it was probably one of the first movies I saw Chris Pine and I remember at the time it as was one of the first movie roles I saw Eliza Dushku in. It should also be noted that this is the only movie that I have watched that was directed by Randall Miller. There was some stunning shots of the wineries around the Nappa Valley.
The role of Bo Barrett is certainly something that I would not readily associate with an actor like Chris Pine who I would probably consider as more likely to play the role of ‘pretty boy’ than that of a ‘hippy’. Pine had great moments with Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman both of whom gave good performances (as you would expect from them). I loved Pullman’s scene toward the end of the movie where he opens a bottle of Chardonnay with a sword. I also loved Alan Rickman’s scene with a bucket of fried chicken. Racheal Taylor was great in this her performance as Sam Fulton was probably one of her better roles while I think I haven’t as much of Freddy Rodríguez’s work as I should have, considering that I am certain that the only other role i have seen him in was as “Benny” Colón in the television series Bull.
I don’t think that I have ever watched a movie based purely on the fact that Dennis Farina was cast in it, he was always one of those actors that pop up in a movie when you least expect it, maybe its because of the movies that I have seen him I have always thought that he had a friendly onscreen presence.