Tired of their dead-end lives, Sam (Alex Turner), his girlfriend Amie (Kate Budgen), and friends Nicole (Kerry Gooderson) and Will (Jonathan Joe Ouseley) decide to rip off Mr. Kerr (Ed Davis), a local restaurateur, for £80,000 - or £20,000 apiece. But what seems like an easy take soon rapidly goes downhill. Nicole seduces Sam and convinces him to get rid of Amie and Danny, leaving the money to the two of them. However, when Sam is paid a visit by the angry Mr. Kerr, he learns that Nicole is actually the gangster’s fiancée and had just double-crossed her former friends.
Mr. Kerr demands his money back, in exchange for letting Sam live. But Sam doesn’t have the money, as he handed it off to a friend for safekeeping. Since Sam refuses to talk, Mr. Kerr calls in reinforcements in the form of “The Cook” (Graham Pannell) – a culinary professional who uses his knives not only for the preparation of food, but also as instruments of torture.
Content
This movie was not the typical gangster type. Most gangster movies focus on the robbery itself or the supposed glamour of the underworld, rather than on the suffering and death it often causes. (Unless, of course, you’re Quentin Tarantino, in which case blood and gore are absolute necessities. But I digress.)
The film begins after the team has pulled off their heist, but right as Sam is about to pull his double-cross by shooting his former girlfriend. The exchange of dialogue the follows between Sam, Amie, and Nicole really helps to draw the audience in because it makes one wonder what is about to unfold. The story of the robbery itself is told in flashback throughout the film as though Sam is letting his mind wander back over those events. It’s heartbreaking to watch the characters express their optimism about the upcoming robbery, especially when the viewer knows that it will all end badly for them. It’s also interesting to see these events from Sam’s perspective. We all know that hindsight is 20-20, and the way in which these scenes are edited together suggest that Sam is mentally kicking himself for not seeing Nicole’s deception before, as well as expressing remorse for killing his friends. Despite the fact that Sam masterminded a robbery and then killed two of his accomplices, he still seems to be the most likeable character in the film, especially when compared to the double-crossing Nicole, her villainous gangster fiancée, and the culinary version of Sweeny Todd. This is perhaps one reason why the audience will tend to hope that Sam makes it out alive in the end.
However, there are a few things within the film that I would have liked to see cleared up. Though the main focus is about the events that occurred after the robbery, it would have been nicer to see or at least hear about the heist itself. All that is ever shown is the robbers walking out of the restaurant with a suitcase in hand. And since Mr. Kerr doesn’t appear to be the easiest person to rob, this gang would need a rather sophisticated plan in order to pull it off. And giving that there is no allusion to their have done any previous illegal activities, it seems surprising that they managed such a large job.
The flashbacks the occur give the film a nice touch – as I mentioned earlier – and help to give some back story, yet some are done in color, while some are in black and white. I think it might be a good idea to pick one style and hold it throughout; and even though it’s rather clichéd, my thought is that black-and-white flashbacks would look better. Given that the look of the film is pretty consistent – and mostly very dark in color – it’s difficult for the viewer to distinguish the flashbacks from the rest of the film, except by recognizing that some of the characters are already dead. This might also be fixed by adding the conventional flash of white light transition in between scenes, but either effect should suffice to make that differentiation.
Finally, in the scene in which Sam is being tortured, both actors did an amazing job. Graham Pannell was excellent as the sick and sadistic “Cook,” and as Sam, Alex Turner’s screaming and writhing made me cringe each time. In this type of a movie, there is definitely something to be said for the power of suggestion, and I think it was used pretty well considering that there were only a couple of shots used in which we could actually see what the cook was doing. However, those few shots didn’t seem to match up well. The cook says that he is going to cut through the muscle in Sam’s arm, but in an overhead shot of him doing so, the cuts actually look to be very superficial. Given the way in which Sam is screaming throughout, one would assume that the cook is cutting quite deeply, resulting in a lot of blood. But when the cook finally lays his knife down, it is only spattered a bit. I can understand the desire to avoid looking like a Peckinpah movie, but in this particular case more is, well, more.
