Dir. John Langridge, UK , 2011, 85 mins
Cast: Sean Pertwee, Kierston Wareing, Martin Compston, Craig Conway
Review by Carol Allen
Four has certain things in common with the far superior The Disappearance of Alice Creed . It’s a first feature film for its director; it has a small cast (four, as in its title, as opposed to Alice ’s three); most of the action takes place in an enclosed space and the plot is concerned with a kidnapping. It even has an actor in common – Martin Compston. But while the sometimes upsetting violence of Alice was mitigated by director J. Blakeson’s sense of style, tight structure and original approach, Four is often self consciously sadistic, repetitive and nothing like as believable.
Conway plays the Husband (none of the characters have names), who has hired the Detective (Pertwee) to kidnap his wife’s Lover (Compston), imprison him in a remote warehouse and rough him up and frighten him a bit as punishment for venturing onto his marital territory. The Detective however has his own agenda, which includes off his own bat kidnapping the Wife (Wareing) as well. But when, after a protracted opening section in which the husband and the detective taunt and beat up the lover, Conway finally confronts the woman, she has some nasty surprises in store for him.
On the plus side the film uses its derelict warehouse setting to good effect, it is well shot by cinematographer Adrian Brown and its use of nearly drained to black and white colour (predictably the red of blood is the most used relief from this palette) is effective in establishing a cold and inhuman atmosphere. And the performances, particularly Wareing’s, are good.
However, apart from eliciting a bit of sympathy for the situation of the unfortunate lover, the characters are thoroughly unlikeable and two dimensional with no redeeming features and the sadism of the film’s approach therefore comes over as merely gratuitous. Paul Chronnell’s screenplay suffers from a certain self consciousness, as in some would be clever references from Pertwee near the beginning of the film to other films such as The Shining and some very laboured business involving Conway’s cigarette lighter, which is repeated ad nauseam. The film also makes an unconvincing attempt to portray itself as feminist in its depiction of the wife – “My wife is mine to do whatever I want with” says the husband, trying presumably to touch an angry nerve with the women in the audience. The twists of the plot are not particularly surprising and the final resolution is marred by fact that Compston, who for Alice moderated his strong accent in the interests of us Southerners to the level of fellow Scot Denis Lawson’s pleasant brogue, voices the final revelations of his character in such impenetrable Scottish as to be incomprehensible to anyone south of the Clyde, leaving us somewhat in the dark as to precisely what his character has really been about.
I watched Four last night and really feel this reviewer has missed the point entirely. I don’t think we were ever mean’t to ‘like’ any of the characters and far from getting know more about them, the script clearly sets out to give the audience a chance to make up their own minds with regards who they really are. For me the attempt is not to portray a feminist perspective, but instead, slightly disconcertingly, to allow us to place ourselves in just such a situation. As for Martin Compston’s ‘impenetrable Scottish’, this Southerner understood every word. In suggesting that any actor, regardless of ethnicity, tame his or her native accent in order to acquiesce to some imagined Middle-England norm, this reviewer is stepping on some very dangerous ground indeed.
I’m from the north of England, and I have to agree with the reviewer about how difficult it was to understand the accent at the end of the film.
too much bloody shouting and sadly not clever enough by far.