Dir.
James Marquand, UK, 2006, 92 mins
Cast: James McMartin, Paul Barber, Tom Bell
I always admire the
enterprise of actors and directors, who rather than waiting
for that great script to come their way, decide to write
their own. So full marks for enterprise to James McMartin
and his friend James Marquand (son of the late director
Richard Marquand - "Return
of the Jedi" and "Jagged Edge"), who wrote
this screenplay together for Marquand's feature directing
debut and McMartin's first starring role. The story is an
attempt to merge the western with the "gritty" gangster
genre of films like "The Long Good Friday" and
early Martin Scorsese, but I'm afraid it meets with distinctly
limited success.
Set in Liverpool, McMartin plays Tom, an ex-boxer fallen
on hard times, who gets a job as a doorman in a run down
night club and finds himself drawn into conflict with the
local hard man Chongi (Mark Russell), head of a rival security
firm, dealer in drugs and all round bad bloke. As a story
it's pretty thin and inconsequential, a mere excuse for a
lot of violence and male posturing. It's also difficult to
follow a lot of the time, which is not helped by the heavy
Scouse accents. It features a very frail looking Tom Bell
in this last film role as Billy the Cowboy, the owner of
the bar, who fancies himself as a character in a western
and wears the appropriate garb. To be fair, McMartin shows
himself to be a not at all bad actor and Paul Barber as Paul,
Tom's mentor and friend, is a strong presence. But the film
itself is derivative, unconvincing and frankly rather boring.
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