Movie Junkyard: 44 Inch Chest

Here's an interesting one. Is 44 Inch Chest a good movie? Who cares, when you've got these people on the screen just saying shit. Here's the whole movie. Ray Winstone plays Colin, a car salesman whose wife tells him she's found someone else when he comes in from the lot one day. He hooks up with the greatest crew of friends in the UK, who kidnap his wife's new guy. They then take him to a low-key spot and mentally and physically torture him. That's all in about the first ten minutes. The rest of the film takes place in that same building or in Colin's mind, as the group collectively decides what to do with "Loverboy" as they affectionately call him, locked in a cupboard for a good portion of the film in the same room as everyone else.

Just from looking at it, 44 Inch Chest screams "gangster/crime" flick. I don't know enough about anything resembling a film scene to know if Winstone has become typecast as someone who plays hardasses, but from this, Sexy Beast, The Proposition, and The Departed, it's arguable he's earned it. The supporting class is a lineup of character actors that should make the House of Windsor proud (and at least one of them indirectly has). Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, and Stephen Dillane. You couldn't get a better group of wise-ass gangster types on the screen if you tried and they're all incredible, as is Winstone. But this isn't your typical "gangster/crime" film, and it's quite a bit different from the ilk popularized by Guy Ritchie in the late 20th century, which have in their own way defined the expectations of what you expect out of a British crime film. It's worth noting that Sexy Beast, which also starred Winstone and was written by the same writers as this movie (Louis Mellis and David Scinto) takes a similar broad theme, one that centers on the drop-off years of professional criminal enterprise. It uses the familiar plot mechanism of a retired heist runner getting drug back into the old world through a heist that he can't avoid. 44 Inch Chest comes devoid of even that convention. There's no world to get drug back into because it doesn't exist anymore. What I see is a group of gangsters who are past any reasonable connection with the criminal world, underworld, or whatever you want to call it, yet it's still what defines them. They're all OLD and tethered to their own unknowing, complicated place where they only let allowable others in (Tom Wilkinson's mother he watches over, Ian McShane's hedonistic victims and accomplices). Colin's wife's adultery gives them an opportunity to recreate who they were. Sexy Beast is about whether you can go back and survive, but 44 Inch Chest is something much different and possibly worse. What happens when you've survived and don't have the capacity to go anywhere because your time has passed?

In that way, the film is what I'm going to inadequately call, not post-modern, but "post-gangster". A group of friends gets together to torment a guy who fucked one of their wives. Oh, and the husband? He's a car salesman who brings home chocolates and flowers for his wife, for God's sake. Sure, he might be unloading the cars illegally, using the business as a drug front, or just totally lying about it. It doesn't matter, there's no edge or tough guy cred there. And the guys are loving it! Sure, they sympathize with Colin, but what else are they doing? Absolutely nothing. We get a great scene where Ian McShane's character of Meredith recounts how he made a big score of cash, by basically getting lucky and playing some idiot who fails miserably at roulette and then later talks about buying shoes. This is what these guys have been reduced to. The kidnapping presents a warped passage back into the old ways, something halfway exciting that reminds of how awesome they used to be. Berating some tied up schmuck is as glorious as they come these days. What does everyone do but Colin? They stand around and talk about the old crazy characters and ridiculous stories. It's their personal version of world building within the film, the world that simultaneously was and is their own, even if others can't see it. And after pledging to give Colin some time alone, they eventually just come back in, because they can't wait to see what happens next and don't want to miss the action.

Just look at what the movie shows us. Basically nothing. The characters only exist outside their own creation when they drag Loverboy out of his place of work. And look at how they do it. They pull up in broad daylight and kidnap him at an indoor/outdoor corner cafe in front of everyone. They don't care, they're stuck in the old ways. Then it's straight to an empty neighborhood. When Colin walks around outside he doesn't see anyone, because all these guys are isolated from the new world. No one else is inside the house they're in. We get a few flashbacks through Colin's mind and that's all the deviation. The shots at the end of various parts of the rundown building? Seems like a reflection of the characters themselves. They're cracked and decaying but they still exist, even if no one is around them.

SPOILER

And that's why Colin lets Loverboy go. After a tremendous monologue on the nature and difficulties of a genuine loving relationship, where the camera is on Winstone's face, close-up, for almost the entire several minutes, everyone comes back in the room and Colin gives his decision. Why? Maybe because through the flashbacks, where Colin violently beats his wife to get her to tell him who Loverboy is, he then realizes that he's already tried to come back to the old world and he just can't cut it anymore. Any semblance of real transition stopped when he took it out on her. His friends encourage him to be a man, but what has that got him? She's gone and it doesn't matter what happens to Loverboy. Colin is back in the old world now, and Loverboy is what he thinks he used to be. Why kill him when he's still got his good days left and he's of the times? Or maybe Colin realizes that, as it seems he's the only one of the group to actually have come up with some semblance of life after gangster, that he should be happy with the years he had. Or does Colin realize he's back in the world, but also figures out that it's enclosed and their little sham is up? He's not a gangster anymore. He and his friends might act like they are for a few hours, but that doesn't change anything. They're all just moping along without any concrete endpoint. In the old days they would've just killed him. But Colin is smart enough to realize they're not there anymore and the uncertainty is just enough to make him think, "what's the point?"

All this is probably crap. I am far from the people I usually read. Watch 44 Inch Chest and don't think about any of this. Just listen to the dialogue and the killer actors that spout it.