Downtime

Bharat Nalluri's 'Downtime' is a curiously assembled film; one part social realism to one part disaster movie. It combines a portrayal of working class life (albeit a very extreme depiction) with a sequence of thriller-style life-or-death moments; between them, the film's characters face death not just through the incident which is the film's centrepiece, a lift failure, but also through suicide, asthma, a potential shooting and two separate fires. Structurally, the film is also odd, as the lift-based story occupies the bulk of the film, but a further dramatic incident (by no means a necessary continuation) ensures that the conclusion links only weakly to what has gone before. But there are some pluses. Some of the scenes are shot very effectively (one made me physically wince), and Paul McGann and Susan Lynch play off each other nicely in the lead role (although another strange twist is that while Lynch's young son features in almost every scene, he appears to be virtually dumb, as he hardly speaks a line in the entire film). Nalluri is perhaps a director to watch on the basis of the talent he shows here; he just needs to work out what sort of movies he wants to make first.

Paul McGann plays an asthmatic police shrink with a fear of heights (and sore feet) who saves a woman from committing suicide. He then decides to ask her out on a date, but they -and her little son- end up in a collapsing elevator in the woman's apartment building (located in a poor district of Liverpool, where everything looks like something out of an Aki Kaurismäki-film). An odd mix of social comment with echoes of -would you believe- "The Towering Inferno"! In the end we don't really care what happens to any of the characters. All though you might ask yourself why the buildings sick and demented juveniles (who plays a major role in the elevator-incident) suddenly disappear for a major portion of the film.

When police psychologist Rob is called to a run-down and near empty council tower block he (sort of) helps to rescue Chrissy from an attempted suicide. However the media spotlight temporarily placed on those that live in the squalid and crime-infested environment brings the yobbish actions of the teenage Jacko to the fore – not something he likes and he immediately stamps his authority back onto the flats. Rob however, can't stop thinking about Chrissy and returns to the flats to see her again, which is probably not that good an idea.

The idea seems simple enough and, although on a bigger budget and with guns the claustrophobic setting of a tower block (of sorts) worked well in Die Hard. However the problems in Downtime are far too great to overcome – the weak characters, the lack of pace, the simplicity of the plot and the generally average writing. The film looks good with the grimy dankness of a council tower block but other than that it is sorely lacking in most areas. The plot creates some tense moments but mostly it stops and starts, to the detriment of the film; generally the story doesn't work as an idea and lacks the sort of tension it needs. Likewise the contrast between the visual style and the main characters doesn't work – the flirting between Chrissy and Rob might have worked in a big silly action movie but with such grim "reality" all around it just doesn't ring true and neither of them are any good as characters. The rest of the block's inhabitants are also weak and they contribute to the lack of involvement I felt in the story.

The cast try hard but they can't really get the tone of the film any better than the director or writer. McGann is OK but he is a bit too annoying to lead the film. Lynch has energy but her constant swearing and the lack of "reality" in her character means that she doesn't fit that well – in another film she would have been the best thing but here she is just part of the problem. Graham and his gang are off-the-shelf clichés without any real value other than plot devices while the rest of the cast are OK in filler roles.

Overall a fairly average film at best. It has some tense moments but the whole thing lacks consistency across the characters, the action and the whole tone. It probably does enough to distract but very little of it seems to fit together convincingly and I'd lost interest in it long before the silly and dull hospital denouncement.

Downtime is not for anyone who is afraid of lifts. The claustrophobic atmosphere in this film is the best thing about it. In fact, I've used lifts all my life without giving them a second thought, but even I found myself taking the stairs for a month or two after watching this.

The story features an educated police negotiator and a foul-mouthed working class mother on the brink of suicide. They have virtually nothing in common, but one evening they find themselves trapped in an elevator. To complicate matters further, some troublesome kids start a fire in the same tower block which rapidly gets out of control.

There is an unconvincing love element to the story which makes parts of it hard to swallow. However, I was prepared to forgive the film for this unlikely plot development because as mentioned before the closed-in atmosphere is brilliantly captured. However, near the end the film does something truly unforgivable. For no reason at all, it suddenly brings in a half-hearted revenge subplot which belongs in another movie and uses it to end a film which has already reached a satisfying conclusion. The sheer stupidity of having a film set almost entirely in a lift suddenly switch location to a hospital room, with an angry father waving a rifle around, utterly undermines the good work that has gone before. Such a shame! Surely the two protagonists should have escaped from the lift and that should have been that.

Worth seeing, then, but it's best if you switch it off about ten minutes from the end.

This is a script which must have appealed on paper to the actors - there's lots and lots of snappy dialogue - BUT the pacing, structure and action sequences are woeful and in the end it leaves Paul McGann, Susan Lynch and Tom Georgeson, to name but three, in limbo, mouthing silly platitudes at the end and embarrassing themselves and us in the process.

So who's to blame - the writer or the director? And how come those producers from Channel 4 etc got involved? Couldn't they suss out this dog beforehand?

The photography (from Tony Imi) is dark and gloomy, appropriately enough, as most of the film is set in a filthy tenement lift shaft, but it makes for an unrelievedly gloomy look.

There's little attempt to show lives and characters other than during the action .

The film is mainly a real-time story, with a prequel where the two protagonists "meet cute" - she's hanging off a balcony & he's sort of trying to rescue her. Then we go to real-time lift shaft fun, followed by some truly mawkish stuff in the hospital at the end. Poor Tom Georgeson is given no real motivation for his actions.

Paul McGann does what he can with the script but he's playing such a ditz that one feels he'd be better off in some nursing home for the terminally frightened. He's also called upon to do illogical and stupid things (what a surprise, in this film). Susan Lynch plays with energy but again, it's a cardboard character with no reality, derived from memories of Hollywood films & television sitcoms. Again, she has to crawl up & down steel cables (as one so frequently does) whilst dressed in a slip of a dress and a cardigan....