In 2000 the film Sexy Beast gave us a different British gangster amidst a wave of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels imitators. It showed us men whose personality was intimidation enough with little need for actual violence. The same writers and a good portion of the cast of Sexy Beast have come back for 44 Inch Chest.
The film focuses on Colin (Ray Winstone), a man who’s been destroyed by the news that his wife’s been cheating on him and is now leaving him. Colin calls up a few of his aging hard-arse buddies and together they kidnap his wife’s new lover. Our story concerns the decision of what to do with this young upstart.
44 Inch Chest is intended as an ode to the power of love: mature, dependent, life-defining love. The film looks at how the most brutal of men can be undone by these feelings. The main problem is - it doesn’t look at it with a particularly broad perspective.
The long and short of it: this is a stage play, filmed. This is almost never a good idea and this film is a brilliant example of exactly why it doesn’t work. The drama spends almost the entire time in one room, creating a claustrophobic feeling that doesn’t boost the tension but instead adds staleness. The language is overly theatrical as well and, though it’s delivered with consummate skill by the phenomenal cast, it merely detracts further from the realism.
In the end, we don’t get enough of Colin’s character and back story as a violent man to be impressed when love turns him around.
