44 INCH CHEST (includes trailer)
May 2nd 2010 01:01
44 Inch chest is a poorly executed film from start to finish, this miscarriage of a movie has, aside from it’s worthy cast, very little going for it. Set in London, Ray Winstone (The Departed, Beowulf, The War Zone, The Proposition) plays Colin Diamond, a dead fish of a man who is all bark and no bite. Colin is a working class crim (I’m assuming so anyway, based on all the clichéd, London boys, ‘hows ya mum’ dialogue), he's just been dumped by his wife for another man. For the first act of the film he lies around crying, and eventually his buddies gather around him to commiserate and decide what to do about the new man he has been cuckolded for.
44 Inch Chest is an unfruitful venture into bad behaviour, it attempts to study love, fear, misogyny and masculinity all to poor results, even as the script seems to fall more in love with itself with each passing line. The film is written by David Scinto, who’s only other writer’s credit up til now has been the marvellous, ‘Sexy Beast’. 44 Inch Chest has a promising story idea that isn’t able to go the distance.
Fantastic actors in a bad film
The film boasts a wealthy cast of top English actors including, John Hurt (Midnight Express, Alien), Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins, Michael Clayton) and Ian McShane (Dead Wood, Sexy Beast) - who steals the film and is one of 44 Inch Chest’s small saving graces. Frankly not a lot happens, it’s one of those films where grown men sit around talking shit for most of the time and unlike more successful scripts like David Rabe’s Hurly Burly, the vulgarity and amoral character’s remain empty, with no insight to be found in their profane ways.
There are a couple of big problems, specifically, that make this film hard to watch. The biggest one is it’s poor ‘digital’ viewing experience. The film is so ridiculously under exposed and dark that it can be sometime impossible to tell what is being seen on screen. I don’t know how the DVD will look but I seriously considered walking out several times during the film as I battled to differentiate what or who I was looking at. I inquired why the film so poorly visible and was told that ‘it’s a digital film and it’s just the way it looks’, if that is the case than it reflects even more poorly on this film, leaving the possibly finer details of this film impossible to spot.
Ray Winstone, who had a string of perfect performances early on in his career
The second major flaw is the film’s dramatic wishy washy lack of focus, it tries to be all kinds of thing, but between it’s multiple shifts in tone and uneven direction by first time director Malcolm Venville, it ultimately never amounts to much. The idea for the story gets stretched very thin, till there’s paper thin drama on the screen. Most of the character’s actions and conversations seem completely weird or out of place. The pointless daydreaming tangents seem to be there purely as filler, along with other badly plotted out scenes.
Incidentally, the film sets a new record for the use of the word ‘cunt’.
It is, however easy to see why these veteran actors where attracted to the project. They all get their moment in the sun and take turns with extended monologues which they all sink their teeth into quite nicely. The film also has the occasional flash of wit and humour, but unfortunately never maintains this enough to justify how in love with it self it seems to be. There are too many other nonsensical, surreal moments in the film that hurt it ultimately, which seem to come from an undisciplined director eager to play around with things unsuited to this story. 44 Inch Chest isn’t just a little uneven, it’s jarringly uneven and the script took a horrible turn somewhere in it’s writing. It’s all one big dissapointment.
Here's 'the normal looking' trailer for 44 Inch Chest, don't be fooled by it, the version in cinema's make it almost impossible to see what's happening.
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
On a tangent I just watched 'The Long Good Friday' for the first time in ages, still one of the best British crime films ever.
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
As for 44 inch - I'm not happy with how much I disliked it. I would pay money to see Ray Winstone reading the bible, that's how much I like the man - but this truly was a poor effort