44 Inch Chest (2009)

Thanks for the memories!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Don't Believe the Hype

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

44 Inch Chest is packed full of bloated, preening masculinity, cold hard chauvinism and dense, wordy exchanges that seem pulled right off the stage, an intense bit of British pseudo-gangster quirk with two writers who seem intent on heightening every syllable to near surreal levels of style. The same scribes are responsible for the glorious verbal stew that can be found in Paul McGuigan's brutal Gangster No. 1 as well as Sexy Beast, and while the level of viciousness here is left almost entirely to the spoken word alone, the elliptical sting of their script still hits home, and even ramps up a bit from those films. A mopey, consistently weepy Ray Winstone stars as boorish Colin Diamond, an gent whose wife (Joanne Whalley Kilmer) has been caught in an affair with a chiseled french pretty boy (Melvil Poupoud). He resorts to a melancholy, comatose state as his perceived manliness visibly circles the drain. His circle of friends arrives, each with their own flamboyant ideas for resolving the situation. Velvety Meredith (Ian McShane, cool as a cucumber) looks on in snooty amusement. Violent guttersnipe Mal (Stephen Dillane, replacing Tim Roth) has the brawn but neither the brains nor ambition to act. Archie (Tom Wilkinson) is the bewildered everyman. Old Man Peanut (a fire and brimstone John Hurt who devours the script like a lion feasting on a gazelle) is a bible thumping, crusty old pot of fury who suggests that wifey should be stoned to death for her indecency and betrayal. They spend the better part of the film pontificating like a babbling senate, whilst Winstone languishes in despair. One wonders what the point of it all is and where it's going, until we arrive at an oddly satisfying third act that somehow negates almost everything we've seen before it. Strangely enough, though, it works, if only to give us something we've never quite seen before, pulling the rug of genre convention out from under us and giving us a piece that almost could resemble a spoof of other works, if it weren't so damned straight faced and persistent in its execution. In any case, I could watch this group of actors assemble ikea furniture and it would still be transfixing. It's just a room full of talent shooting the breeze for most of the running time, and in a genre where one can scarcely here the performers talk over the gunfire and cheekily referential soundtrack a lot of the time, I'll damn well take something a bit more paced, quiet and stately. Winstone smears over his usual seething anger with a morose depression would almost be endearing if it weren't so pathetic. Wilkinson brings his usual studious nature. McShane is pure class in anything (even a few B movies I'm sure he'd love to forget) and he swaggers through this one like a regal peacock, getting some of the best lines to chew on. Dillane is detached and indifferently cruel, with seldom a word uttered, his lack of mannerism contrasted by the vibrant animosity of his three peers. Hurt is pure gold as the closest the film comes to caricature, just a vile old coot who belongs in the loony bin raving to the walls about awful things that happened 'back in his day'. Different is the key word for this one, and one might be easily fooled by the poster and synopses into assuming this is a revenge flick populated by action and violence. Not so much. Although a lot of the time that is my cup of tea, it's nice to get a welcome deviation once in a while, and this one is a real treat.

(48%) What maybe could have been the British equivalent of "Reservoir dogs" with its almost single location, tough guy crooks, and talky script sadly just doesn't have the depth to warrant a full length feature length film. The performances on the other hand are really very good from the strong cast, but the lack of any real substance hampers throughout resulting in by the end a somewhat pointless watch. Combine that with a script that for long periods amounts to little more than almost constant cockney based foul mouthed swearing that makes this only a half recommendation mainly for the acting and sadly not a lot whole lot else.

Im sorry to say it, but I hated this movie. I suppose the actors tried and put on o.k. performances, but the story line was stupid, the dialogue was annoying, the whole movie was just annoying to watch.If I had of known better I would not have payed a quarter (25 cents) to watch this movie. Story: alright, some young guy slept with an old English dude's wife, so old English dude gos all psycho , gets a bunch of his semi loser friends together and they kidnap young guy that slept with old dude's wife. Then they sit around talking all this B.S. dialogue...And you get to listen to old dude rant and whine about how young guy slept with his wife and ruined his whole life. Hello! REALLY! Get over it old dude, its the year 2011 (or 2009 when movie came out , i think), people sleep with each other all the time and the world doesn't end. Also I just really don't care that young guy slept with old dude's wife, far less wish to see a whole movie based upon this fact.And to be fair, I suppose the camera work and some of the acting and dialogue was o.k. but this doesn't change the fact that the story,majority of dialogue and the character's were boring and annoying. If you want a good thriller or drama please look else where. I dislike this movie so much, I can't even be bothered to edit my review of it properly.

A clever film, missold as a gangster flick. There are no gangsters in this film. Used car salesman Colin comes home from work and his wife confesses to cheating on him. He loses the plot and beats the crap out of her. This is a film about what goes through his mind afterward. Revenge fantasies mixed with god knows what, and a bit of commentary on the failings of macho culture. As a cinematic portrayal of how a man feels after being cheated on, it's a benchmark, I can't think of a film that does a better job of it. It's a man's film for sure, not pretty other than being well lit, and most of the facets of Colin's personality / most of the other characters are tosspots of the highest order.