Recent Release Reviewed: 44 Inch Chest

44 Inch Chest
Starring: Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Dillane, Joanne Whalley
Screenplay: Louis Mellis, David Scinto
Director: Malcolm Venville

"You're in the right, Colin. Remember that."

Colin Diamond (Winstone) is a broken man. His wife Liz (Whalley) has left him. Lying on the floor of his house surrounded by the debris of his rage, listening to Harry Nillson's "Without You", he picks up the phone and calls Archie (Wilkinson). Archie calls Meredith (McShane). The next day the three of them, accompanied by Mal (Dillane) and Old Man Peanut (Hurt) kidnap a French waiter from a restaurant and take him to a run down old house. There they wait for Colin to kill "Loverboy", drinking, smoking, and taunting the poor man who's locked in the cupboard, but Colin's not the man he used to be.

Expectations were pretty high for this Brit flick, and reasonably so. From the writers of Sexy Beast and featuring a cast full of some of the best actors around. I thought that 44 Inch Chest would be a cult hit, receive lots of good reviews and maybe even be one of the sleeper hits of the year. But then it got a fairly muted reception at the festivals. Comparisons to Sexy Beast were unfavourable. The only thing people seemed to be positive about were the performances and the swearing.

Well, these two aspects of the film are certainly the strongest. The dialogue seems tailor-made for each of the incredibly talented actors who comprise the cast, and they tear into it with vigour. Winstone is an actor who always seems to be happiest when not being pressured to put on an accent and 44 Inch Chest finds him well within his comfort zone, vocally at least. But this also his best performance since Nil by Mouth. He's normally called upon to be threatening and intimidating, which he can do with his eyes closed. Here, he's shivering and shaking. He's backed up by a cast who are all clearly thoroughly enjoying themselves. McShane gets to show a bit of range as the urbane, homosexual Meredith, who seems to be the most balanced of Colin's band, but no less deadly for it. Wilkinson is well-cast as mother's boy Archie, and Dillane gives a strong performance as the acerbic Mal. Perhaps most impressively, he manages to not remind us that Tim Roth was originally cast in his part before having to bow out due to his commitment to US show Lie to Me. And then there's John Hurt. Hurt's played bastards before, but never one quite so foul-mouthed and brimming with bile as Old Man Peanut. With hair pressed flat back against his skull and a set of false teeth, given one-liners like "I wouldn't give her the pickings out of my handkerchief!", Hurt apparently decided to chew up the scenery with fantastically malicious energy.

Energy is what the film needs. At its core, the un-cinematic plot of 44 Inch Chest could easily be a play. It's set almost entirely in one room, and when the film leaves the room, it loses the plot. So, for the first half, the film relies entirely on the cast and the dialogue. No room for flashy camera tricks in the room. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If you're going to watch a group of actors sitting around talking, you could do much worse than be saddled with this cast. But it's also clear that director Venville, and writers Mellis and Scinto, are self-conscious about the one-location issue, and take every opportunity to escape.

Instead of giving us any time with the characters prior to the kidnapping, the filmmakers instead give one flashback to Meredith, one to Colin, and make the reckless choice of placing the entire second half of the film in Colin's head. Let's deal with the flashbacks first. Colin's shows us just how he found out that Liz was cheating on him: she told him. It's well-shot, showcases Winstone and Whalley well, and gives us vital information about the characters. Meredith's flashback is entertaining but has no relevance to the plot. Telling us about how he accompanied eccentric Tippi (an OTT Stephen Berkoff) to a casino and made thousands of pounds gambling, it seems to exist purely to allow McShane to look at the camera and have Berkoff ham it up.

Then there's the second half. After about 45 minutes of build-up, Colin orders his friends out of the room so he can have a one-on-one chat with Loverboy. No problem here, but we suddenly find ourselves in Colin's tortured mind. The dialogue's still fun but lacks the immediacy and rawness of the first half since we know that it's not real. And frankly the less said about the country estate fantasies the better. I'm not complaining about the lack of violence in the film, although I can imagine that audience members anticipating a Brit gangster flick will be let down. There is violence here, but it falls into the "abuse" category rather than "cool stylized". It's also important to mention that Whalley's performance in the second half of the film, as the seductive man-eater vision of Liz that Colin has in his head, is excellent. But the second half is definitely where the film goes off the rails. I don't like to criticise a film for trying to reach beyond it's genre limitations but the majority of the dream sequences are pretentious mistakes.

It's a shame because 44 Inch Chest has plenty of redeeming features. Colin Diamond is a fascinating character, convinced he's hurting because he loves too deeply and mostly blind to the fact that he's actually a monster. The pleasure of watching the cast enjoy the dialogue is something that is difficult to overstate. There's also a nice score from David Lynch regular Angelo Badalamenti and Massive Attack. Is it worth a watch? Certainly. Winstone, Hurt, and McShane are at their best and that's not something to ignore. There's the bizarrely fantastic sequence in which Old Man Peanut narrates Samson and Delilah ("What's her name? Delilah. Yeah....right hooer!") And when 44 Inch Chest is running smoothly, it's as good as we hoped. It's just can't keep up with it's pretensions.

6/10

The Dollhouse Memorial List Part 2: Jonny's Top 5 Cancelled TV Shows

Following Ben's idea to write a top 5 cancelled TV shows list, I decided to strike out with blazing originality, and write my own. Yes, that's how we do things around here. So, here are my five unjustly terminated small-screen programmes.

1. Firefly (2002-2003)
This is the one that is still pretty much the benchmark of unfair cancellations. Nerds everywhere still get angry about Firefly being shut down, myself included. Joss Whedon's superb space western show lasted an all-too-brief 14 episodes, only 11 of which were aired. Those 11 were shown out of order. And Fox wondered why ratings were low. The show's merry band of smugglers, led by war veteran Malcolm Reynolds (Fillion), move from job to job, struggling to keep ends meet and keep flying. Oh and there's the evil alliance, who are hunting down River and Simon Tam who are being sheltered on board. Yes, it's kind of a niche show, but the DVD sales were enough to convince Universal to pay for feature film version Serenity, which was just as excellent. It's my favourite Whedon series, and it introduced us to the talents of Nathan Fillion and Summer Glau, and made cult heroes out of Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk. The dialogue was fantastically quotable, the characters wonderfully well-drawn, and it achieved the rare feat of making a show about smugglers on a spaceship feel both intimate and thrilling. From Fillion's Captain Mal and Baldwin's not-too-bright muscle Jayne, to Jewel Staite's shiny happy mechanic Kaylee and Glau's damaged-but-deadly runaway River, we cared about each of the great characters. Why can't we have more?
Best episode: Either "Jaynestown", in which Jayne (the ship's muscle) finds out that he's a Robin Hood-esque folk hero to an oppressed small town, or "Objects in Space", where a mercenary gets more than he bargained for while trying to abduct River.
Best quote: That's tough. Everyone gets great lines in Firefly. River: "I can kill you with my brain". Jayne: "I get ten percent! Let me do the math here, ten percent of nothin'...nothin' and a nothin' , carry the nothin'...
Why it was cancelled: Not enough people watched it. And Fox are the devil
Sum it up: "We're still flying" "That's not much." "It's enough."


2. Arrested Development (2003-2006)
This is one of those shows which got a huge amount of critical acclaim, but too few viewers. Star Jason Bateman described AD as "The Royal Tenenbaums meets Cops", which is an accurate distillation of the combination of witty family feud driven dialogue and the documentary-style hand-held camera work. Bateman played Michael Bluth, the only normal-ish member of the spoiled Bluth clan who lost all their money. It made stars out of Bateman, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, and David Cross and has created the kind of fanatical following that only a cancelled cult show can. Comparisons to Seinfeld are completely justified, as are comparisons to the still-running 30 Rock. It's wacky, and the third series was admittedly too wacky for its own good, but it was tempered with awkwardly believable situations, great characters and dialogue that is more quotable than Firefly. Now, what network was this on again?
Best episode: I'm going with "Pier Pressure", in which Michael and Gob suspect Michael's son George Michael (Cera) of smoking marijuana and decide to teach him a lesson.
Best character: It's a tie between Michael's magician (and ex-stripper) brother Gob (Arnett), and his hapless therapist turned aspiring actor brother-in-law Tobias (Cross). Michael's parents (Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter) come a close second though.
Why it was cancelled: Not enough viewers. Oh and Fox are the devil
Sum it all up: "There's been a lot of lying in this family"
"And a lot of love"
"More lies"


3. Deadwood (2004-2006)
David Milch's foulmouthed Western couldn't have really been made at any other network than HBO. It was expensive, defiantly adult and even more defiantly literary. The dialogue was often deliberately oblique, and sometimes the cusses were almost the only comprehensible words. But it had one of the best casts on TV, led by Ian McShane, proving he was more than Lovejoy with his blistering performance as Gem Saloon owner, murderer, pimp, and civic minded Al Swearengen. He was backed up by Timothy Olyphant (ostensibly in the lead) as the Sheriff with a short fuse Seth Bullock, Brad Dourif as the town Doc, Powers Boothe as Al's rival, John Hawkes as Seth's partner Sol Starr, Molly Parker as the heroin-addicted widow Alma Garrett, Garret Dillahunt playing not one but two muderers, and Keith Carradine as the legendary Wild Bill Hicock. Milch showed the west as it was: dangerous, blood-soaked, disease-ridden. Like Unforgiven, the characters cling to what they know as the march of progress threatens to replace them with a greater evil. The show occasionally got too involved with the Machiavellian workings of the town as it struggled to give up its non-Union status and become part of a state, but when it gained momentum it was superb.
Best character: Al Swearengen. Without a doubt.
Best quote: "Now, here's my counter offer to your counter offer - go fuck yourself!"
Best episode: Either "Suffer the Little Children", in which two con-artists get a brutal lesson, or "A Lie Agreed Upon Part 1", if only for Al's bloodsoaked greeting to Bullock's wife: "Welcome to fuckin' Deadwood!"
Why it was cancelled: Ratings weren't high enough for the very expensive show.
Sum it all up: "Don't I yearn for the days when a draw across the throat made fucking resolution"



4. Angel (1999-2004)
Yup, it's another Joss Whedon show. Given that he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'd have thought that Fox would cut him some slack. No such luck. That being said, Angel had the longest run of any of the series on this list with a full five series. Unlike Firefly, there's a lot of episodes to watch and immerse yourself in. Angel was one of those rare things: a very good spinoff. Taking the character of Angel (David Boreanaz), the-vampire-with-a-soul, from Buffy and moving him to LA where he founds what is essentially a PI service with Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), another second-string Buffy character, and an Irish half-demon sounds like a bad joke. But it worked. Admittedly, it wasn't until the second and third series that Angel really settled into a groove with the addition of Giles-esque Wesley (Alexis Denisof), significantly altered from his Buffy incarnation, ditsy nerd Fred (Amy Acker) and vampire hunter Gunn (J. August Richards). Things got very shaky with the addition of Angel's angst-ridden teen son Connor in series 4, but they got rid of him for series 5 and brought punk vampire Spike (James Marsters) in from Buffy in an inspired stroke. The show was cancelled halfway through series 5 and the last episodes do seem a little rushed, but they are among the show's best. Acker is especially good as Fred and warrior goddess Illyria, Denisof comes into his own in the last series, and Marsters gives the series the sense of humour it needed so desperately.
Best character: Up until series 5, I'd say Wesley or Fred. Series 5, it's a tie between Spike and Illyria. I do dearly love the scenes in which Spike has to test her abilities. "She can hit like a Mack truck, selectively alter the flow of time, and, er, possibly talk to plants." "I enjoy hitting Spike. He makes noise."
Best quote: Spike: "You're a wee little puppet man!"
or
Spike: "This next one's called "The wanton folly of me mum"!"
Best episode: Either Smile Time, in which Angel is turned into a puppet, or A Hole in the World, in which Whedon shows us that he's prepared to kill off the nicest character even if it makes us cry.
Why it was cancelled: Dropping viewing figures. And because Fox are the devil

5. Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000)
Before Judd Apatow was the Grand Lord General of Hollywood comedy, he was the producer of this much-loved but short-lived high-school comedy set in 1980. Deliberately and lovingly focussed on the kids who serve as the butt of jokes on most high-school shows, it deserved much more attention and a longer run than the one series gave it. Starring Linda Cardellini as Lindsay Weir and John Francis Daley as her younger brother Sam, it was about both of their groups. Lindsay is a maths geek who decides to become one of the stoner gang (the freaks), including Daniel Desario (James Franco), Nick Andropolis (Jason Segel) and Ken Miller (Seth Rogen), and Sam is a nerd who is trying to get the girl of his dreams with the help of his two friends Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) and Neal Schweiber (Samm Levine). Freaks dealt with traditional issues like the first beer and the first kiss in a way that wasn't old and tired, and also gave us heartbreaking situations like Neal finding out that his dad who he admires so much is having an affair. It was as funny as the best teen comedies and touching in a way that noughties youth indies couldn't match.
Best episode: Either "The Garage Door", with Neal's discovery, or "Chokin' and Tokin'", in which Lindsay smokes weed and allergic Bill is fed peanuts by a bully and falls into a coma.
Best character: Either the so-uncool-he's-cool Harris (Stephen Lea Sheppard) or hippie guidance counsellor Jeff Rosso (Dave "Gruber" Allen).
Best quote: Jeff Rosso: "What do you want me to do, to do for you, to see you through?" Guidance through Grateful Dead!
Why it was cancelled: No one was watching it.
Sum it all up: Nick: "Look, these teachers...these teachers want us to work, you know? And I say fine...I'll work. But you gotta let me do the kind of work that I wanna do. And for me, Lindsay, it's my- it's my drum kit, man. This my passion, you know? This is- this is the essence of who I am now. But before I had this, I was lost too. You see what I'm saying? You need to find...your reason for- for living, man. You've got to find, your big, just gigantic drum kit, you know?"