Two things must ye know about Inch Chest, a new British 'gangster' movie from the writers and star of Sexy Beast.
1/ It's less a movie and more a filmed 'play'. It''s mostly set in one grungy room in one day. It's about Colin (Ray Winstone), a broken man after his attractive wife Liz (Joanne Whalley) has left him for a young handsome French waiter. Colin's chums (it's implied they're tied in with London's crime scene) kidnap the bewildered Frenchman, and deliver him to Colin for...well, whatever Colin wants to do with him.
While the cinematic convention of a one room story isn't anything new (look at classics Resevoir Dogs or 12 Angry Men), 44 Inch Chest forgoes many of the cinematic tools that could elevate the movie, by making the wordy plot... more visual.
That said, the script is stunning, it being a exploration of love (in various forms of homosexual, friendship, motherly and, of course, marriage). It's also a redemptive tale, which takes Colin slowly into a surreal dreamworld, before being spat out into the harsh reality that his wife's left him.
The cast are uniformly excellent...potential award winners all. Winstone goes through the whole range of the human condition..from a fragile shell of a man to a raging monster. Brit character actors deliver unexpected turns, with John Hurt as the curmudgeonly, foul-mouthed Old Man Peanut, Ian McShane goes highroller and high-camp as gay Meredith, Tom Wilkinson goes chatty and submissive as Archie while Steven Dillane gets the more familiar business geezer role as Mal. If that wasn't enough you even get an utterly crazy Steven Berkoff cameo (would you expect anything less from Berkoff?). There being top class lovies, they get their teeth in to the excellent monologues. It might be talky, but it's never anything less than riveting.
In terms of this script combined with these actors...this is the very definition of value-for-money.
2/ This, surely, has the most frequent use of the word 'cunt' in any motion picture ever. John Hurt is the main culprit here, but all the cast get stuck in with the torrent of profanity. Marvelous.
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