44 Inch Chest 2010 British film written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto, who wrote the British gangster movie Sexy Beast. It is the debut feature from British commercial director and photographer Malcolm Venville.
Plot
We follow the anguish experienced by Colin Diamond (played by Ray Winstone), who discovers his wife is having an affair with a young handsome French waiter. To deal with the issue, Colin turns to his motley crew of friends who convince him to kidnap his wife's lover, with the expectation of torturing and finally killing him. Once the men are assorted into a run-down dirty hotel room with the lover locked in a 44 inch chest, we are witness to the various options explored by Colin and his friends who argue about what to do to their kidnapped victim. Amongst Colin’s unfolding mental breakdown and the unrelenting verbal and emotional abuse directed at all involved, wackiness ensues.
Review
The movie is a good depiction of a mental breakdown as a result of a broken heart dressed up to be a British gangster movie. We understand Colin’s infatuation with his wife and the agony of resolving his mental and emotional state.
We see different aspects of the life and perspective of the aged bachelor through an assortment of characters, from the grumpy old homophobic sexist male, to the suave rich gay male. These characters could all serve as different aspects of Colin’s psyche as he chews over what to do about his situation within the confines of a filthy, decrepit run-down hotel room. The movie is absolutely at its best when we see only the room full of men yelling and verbally abusing each other, expressing their opinion with extremely harsh language, all with the best of intentions to help their hurting friend in need. The cast of Glengarry Glen Ross referred to their film as Death of a F-in’ Salesman, due to the similar themes and amount of profanity used. 44 Inch Chest could similarly be referred to as The Usual F-’n Suspects.
The movie closely derails in the flash-backs and real-world scenes however, where the great build-up of tension and flow of the hotel-room scenes are halted, only to be started up again from scratch when we return to the fantastic set up inside that room. The movie would have therefore been stronger if the location was limited to the single room location, with surrealist/absurdist dream-sequences being the only view outside of it. The cast of pedigree actors, including Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson and Ian McShane, and the richness of their characters would have been able to have maintained our attention. Such a scenario can work wonders: some great examples of the one-room set-up is the fantastic Australian movie The Interview and Identity. The original Saw movie also took place in one room, and that spawned up to 6 movies! As it is, the script would have made a great stage-play if one hasn’t been produced already.
In regards to the movie’s acting, Ray Winstone’s character switches moods too quickly on occasion to convince us of his sincerity, although this may be intentional given the mental duress he is experiencing. Some of the dialogue delivered by Ray and the actors playing Colin’s friends is plodding and can at times be surprisingly stilted, like you are watching a play where the actors are looking for silence to queue their line.
Rating
This is a fantastic looking movie, with great cinematography by Daniel Landin and a smooth, richly detailed and lovely colour-graded picture. John Hurt is amazing as a foul mouthed homophobic (but hypocritically quite bi-curious) sexist misogynistic frugal older man, and the other characters are extremely enjoyable to watch once they are tearing into each other with extremely harsh language; one scene of note is the casino recount delivered by Ian McShane’s character.
There is a great movie here, but it seems to lack a clear focus of what it wants to communicate, jamming in unnecessary ‘real-world’ scenes when all that is really needed is to concentrate on the analytical processes of its main character.
Debut features can be amazing movies as evidenced by A Single Man. This movie is good, although it could have been much better, so with a heavy heart (if I had one) I give this first draft 2.5 *bleeps* out of 5
Check out the film at IMDB, and check out the tonally misleading trailer.
Luke McWilliams September 2010