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This isn't to say that there isn't a niche market for a film about Brit gangsters hanging around and getting bloody: The charm and vitality of Guy Ritchie's first two films depends greatly on these attributes, as do more high-minded efforts like Sexy Beast and less-original retreads like Layer Cake. But where those films were lively, loose and, in the case of Beast, expertly formed, Venville's is stiff and sober, melodramatic and meandering. Those words could also easily describe any one of the five gangsters, led by heartbroken Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone), who kidnap the French waiter who has been sleeping with Colin's wife Liz.
Liz, who is played by Joanne Whalley, appears primarily in flashbacks and psychological head-trips that Colin suffers while, in alternating tirades, threatening, guilt-tripping and interrogating the waiter. His friends appear in these illusions as well but they are mainly there to give the film some semblance of black humor, juxtaposed to Colin's deadly serious monologues. John Hurt and Ian McShane get the juiciest exchanges as the aging bigot and the pompous 'poofer', respectively, but then there's also cheery Wilkinson as Colin's best mate and the reliable Stephen Dillane as the group's incorrigible flirt.
These archetypes, all road-tested to death in similar films both foreign and domestic, essentially just allow Scinto and Mellis to unleash goading, curse-laden jeremiads on the broadest of subjects: Masculinity, women, homosexuality, marriage and love. The amount of talk is immense, which adds to the film's stagey aesthetic and claustrophobic camerawork; even the editing suggests a theatrical bareness. The film as a whole, however, suffers greatly from the dullness of mood and placid imagery that Venville extracts from what is, ostensibly, a chamber play with gangsters.
Despite its visual inertia, the film survives mostly on the ease with which these performers can now handle these characters. Even Whalley seems to have known her character for years. Ultimately, you can't blame the consummate professionals in the cast for taking it easy on this one: Nothing in the production has been calibrated to lacerate, and the emotional wreckage between Liz and Colin seems more like a casually dismissed one-night-stand. The end result of all this is a quick, simple, and forgettable watch, which feels like a waste given the talent involved.
