“44 Inch Chest”
Reviewed 15 December 2009 by Ted Faraone
Four stars out of five; $10 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.50
A NASTY MOVIE ABOUT NASTY PEOPLE
“44 Inch Chest” is a mean-spirited film. It was written originally for the stage, which accounts for much of its static shooting. In this case, that is not a bad thing, because in concentrates audiences’ minds on what is taking place. Here it is a vertiginously violent escapade in which a bunch of lowlifes kidnap a French waiter in London (Melvil Poupaud in a non-speaking role) and torture him for screwing the wife of one of them, Colin Diamond, ably played by Ray Winstone. Helmer Malcolm Venville does a workmanlike job of transforming this play to screenplay. And the players, notably Ian McShane as egotistical wealthy homosexual Meredith, John Hurt perfectly cast as crabby, violent, “Old Man Peanut,” Tom Wilkinson as Archie, and the stunning Joanne Whalley as Liz, Colin’s unfaithful wife, nail every note to perfection.
Back to the mean-spiritedness. There is hardly as scene with the slightest touch of human decency in the entire flick. It takes a strong stomach to endure its 95, R-rated minutes without tossing one’s cookies, but the descent into this little hell of a London that used to, but according to the filmmakers, no longer exists (despite being set in the present), while not quite on the order of Dante’s “Inferno,” still is worth the watching. It’s a bit like Tom Stoppard’s “The Homecoming” with a liberal sprinkling of violence.
The lowlifes are friends who share a sort of club and clubhouse (a gutted building). Old Man Peanut can’t get over the sort of violence they’d dish out in the old days -- to him they have all gone soft. But Winstone and Whalley (with the exceptions of McShane’s star turns) carry the pic. Winstone is a rugged (hence the title “44 Inch Chest”) older guy married for 20 years to a beautiful woman (Whalley) who tells him in the opening reel, as he comes home bearing flowers, that she wishes to divorce him for a much younger man.
He beats her to a pulp. It is the domestic violence and how it is handled that cost this pic a star in your critic’s estimation. It’s too graphic, and this picture cries out for a Hayes Office ending, which it lacks. (Your critic is hardly a moralist, but there is no excuse for letting batterers off the hook.) Much of the action is shown in flashback. Pic opens with the devastation in the Diamond house after Colin has beaten up his wife and trashed the joint. Said reel is actually funny since one has not yet learned how and why the mess happened.
Gradually the heart of the matter is revealed. Much of the action takes place in Diamond’s imagination during the torture of the French waiter. Every conceivable angle about all the principals is played out in imaginary sequences to good effect. Especially effective is Whalley’s imaginary visit to the torture chamber. She has not lost a step.
Eventually Diamond suffers an attack of reality and lets his prisoner go. The ending is equivocal and a tad difficult to believe. We have a seriously battered wife, a seriously battered boyfriend, and a ringleader who walks away from it all. This is hardly a neat package. Loose ends abound. But one has to believe that tying it up into one would diminish its effectiveness.
Kudos to Dan Landin, Cinematographer; Angelo Badalamenti, Composer; John Stevenson; Production Designer; and Rick Russell, Editor. Tech credits excel. Just don’t take the kids.
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