Starring: Isaach de Bankolé, Paz de la Huerta, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar, Bill Murray Written and directed by: Jim Jarmusch
An enigmatic hitman is hired to perform a job in Spain. Along the way he meets various people who talk to him about different subjects.
I've always been a Jarmusch fan. I understood when some people complained about his films were too slow, too knowing. I didn't mind. I liked them. However, The Limits of Control, a film Jarmusch has referred to as his "inaction movie", is so deliberately slow and uneventful that it's very difficult to enjoy, even for his most ardent admirers.
It's not exactly a new tactic that Jarmusch employs in this film, with the main character drifting along, meeting interesting people played by well-known character actors. Dead Man and Broken Flowers were very similar in that respect. However, both of those films had more going on than their cameos. In The Limits of Control, a huge amount of the film is spent following Lone Man on his silent journey, connecting with no one. Chris Doyle's photography makes Spain look wonderful, and de Bankolé is effortlessly cool, but after a while the inaction becomes draining.
There are moments of humour, mostly delivered by Paz de la Huerta as The Nude, who manages to make her performance as memorable as her consistent lack of clothing. There's something wonderful, too, about a film that gives Tilda Swinton such a marvelous slo-mo entrance and exit, clad in white cowboy hat and peroxide wig, twirling a clear plastic umbrella.
So, basically what you want to watch in this film are the cameos. Don't assume that the fantastic cast will be on screen for long. With the exception of de Bankolé and de la Huerta, no one appears for longer than five minutes. All the scenes with the famous actors are structured the same, with an actor you recognise approaching de Bankolé, asking him if he speaks Spanish, delivering a monologue on a subject such as art, cinema, science, and bohemian culture, then giving our man a matchbox. These range from well-played and interesting (Swinton gives an enthusiastic turn and looks very cool, Hurt manages to imbue his character with a nice bit of weariness and cynicism), to forgettable or misjudged (Bernal's oddball "Mexican" isn't funny enough). Finally Bill Murray appears as the target, and feels like he's walked into the wrong film.
So, it's safe to assume this is an experiment film. It's a comment on what we expect from our movies. We expect things to happen. Or, even in films where nothing happens, we expect it to be entertaining, or interesting. There are quite long sequences of the film that are somehow very watchable despite the lack of incident, but for non-fans those scenes will feel like death. The Limits of Control shows flashes of classic Jarmusch, but, for too much of its running time, it's an infuriating test.
5/10 (for Jarmusch fans) 3/10 (for people who don't like his films)
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.
Starring: Isaach de Bankolé, Paz de la Huerta, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar, Bill Murray
It's not exactly a new tactic that Jarmusch employs in this film, with the main character drifting along, meeting interesting people played by well-known character actors. Dead Man and Broken Flowers were very similar in that respect. However, both of those films had more going on than their cameos. In The Limits of Control, a huge amount of the film is spent following Lone Man on his silent journey, connecting with no one. Chris Doyle's photography makes Spain look wonderful, and de Bankolé is effortlessly cool, but after a while the inaction becomes draining.
There are moments of humour, mostly delivered by Paz de la Huerta as The Nude, who manages to make her performance as memorable as her consistent lack of clothing. There's something wonderful, too, about a film that gives Tilda Swinton such a marvelous slo-mo entrance and exit, clad in white cowboy hat and peroxide wig, twirling a clear plastic umbrella.
So, it's safe to assume this is an experiment film. It's a comment on what we expect from our movies. We expect things to happen. Or, even in films where nothing happens, we expect it to be entertaining, or interesting. There are quite long sequences of the film that are somehow very watchable despite the lack of incident, but for non-fans those scenes will feel like death. The Limits of Control shows flashes of classic Jarmusch, but, for too much of its running time, it's an infuriating test.
