Seule la mort peut m'arrêter

Mood, texture and ambiguity in a British crime thriller? You better believe it. ISWID is no conventional revenge thriller. Mike Hodges, whose Get Carter is something of a gold standard for this kind of thing, subverts auidence expectations by producing a similar setup (a ganster related death, the vengeful brother returning to the city to find out what happened) and then proceeding to wrongfoot them by concentrating on the psychological fallout from crime rather than screen violence or genre cliches.

A moody Clive Owen plays Will Graham, a former London gangster who became so full of loathing for his life of murder and criminality that he has rejected it totally having moved away and left behind the trappings of organised crime. 3 years on he leads a reclusive, hermit like existence, surviving on odd jobs and living in the back of a van. When his younger brother Davy is raped by local hood Malcolm McDowell, he kills himself, an event that serves as the catalyst for Will's return to his former life as he attempts to find those responsible but perhaps more importantly why they did it.

This is a dark, thoughtful piece, less concerned with the usual revenge thriller trajectory than the psychological underpinnings of it's subject matter. It's unusual for this type of film to stop and reflect on events rather than just skip to the inevitable confrontation but Hodges pulls it off not least because his London backdrop is a sinister place where social and moral breakdown are continually in the background. The city has a contaminating effect from which Owen has tried to flee. Crime dehumanises everyone here, both victim and gangster. Much of the movie is about Owen's character attempting to resist a return to his former self but as he learns more about his brother's final hours the guard slips and over the course of the film he gradually transforms back to the killer he once was, culminating in a physical and material change toward the end of the film.

It's not a movie that gives you all the answers nor it does it give you everything you expect. You never find out what single event, if any, caused Owen to leave London so you're left to share in the confusion of those around him. It's also unclear what McDowell's relationship is to Rhys Meyers but this simply adds to the sense of unease. In every scene omission suggests hidden layers which force you maintain distance from the characters, making you a less emotion but more thoughtful observer. It could be anticlimatic for those expecting an orgy of bloody revenge, but Hodges would undermine the disguist registered by Owen's character for his violent past by indulging the voyeuristic demands of the audience to witness that violence. The film cuts away from it and introspectively explores its aftermath, not to mention its occasionally tragic inevitablility. Ambiguity is the watchword here because, Hodges suggests, you can't necessarily trust everything you see and hear. "Memories can deceive" Owen's voiceover tells us in the scene that bookends the film, and as everything that follows the introduction is effectively a flashback, we have to consider the possibility that certain scenes are misleading. The focus of the film intially seems to be the rape of Will's brother but this is the hook upon which Hodge's probes the lure and ultimately the consequence of crime. It won't be to everyone's taste but ISWID will have you scrutinising the detail long after you've left the cinema, something which can't be said for too many crime thillers these days.

An unsettling, thought provoking film. Recommended.

Not predictable like most revenge dramas. Nice to see Clive Owen's character actually in love with someone his own age. Interesting music, if a little distracting. Very dark. Not a family flick. Not a date flick. Well written. Great acting by most characters. It was too short. It was a big build up to a very short denouement, but I guess that suits the tone and the theme of the film. Not sure why people gave this such low marks. I guess they were expecting Lock stock or snatch seeing as its kind of in the British gangster genre. If you go in expecting that, then you will be disappointed. What was great about this movie was that we slowly got to know the characters without much of significance being said about them outright. It was slow in creating a mood without ever being boring.

You'll sleep while it's on

As you might guess, I'm not Clive Owen's biggest fan, having suffered through his woodenly monotonous performances, but I forced myself to see this because Mike Hodges has made some good films in the past (as well as cack like MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE). Sadly, this manages to be even worse than MORONS, a numbingly tedious movie where the semi-comatose leads are at least three hours behind the audience in guessing the plot. The shock revelation was obvious from the start and Hodges never makes you interested in getting there. He's not helped by his cast. They're either overacting like McDowell or Meyers or totally incapable of showing signs of life, like Rampling and Owen. Even before it was invented Rampling has always looked like she's had too much botox, but inexperienced filmgoers might think she'd OD'd here she's so stiff. Her expression doesn't change from its deathmask once. Owen is more hopeless than usual, shuffling through like a zombie from a cheap George Romero ripoff. He still can't act and his vocal performance is still like a bored photocopier salesman demonstrating some clapped out machine with one eye on the clock for the pub's opening.

Contrary to other posters, it's not thoughtful or atmospheric. The plot is obvious, the characters infantile. There's no depth, no ideas, just a dragging running time to fill out. And it is achingly slow in the doing it. From a first-timer this picture would have been laughed out of the office at script stage it's so empty and predictable.

British audiences shunned the film (as they did CROUPIER) but Americans might just mistake his accent for a performance. But for the rest of us, it's another pitiful performance in the dullest British gangster film of the past twenty years. That's quite an achievement, but it's the film's only one.

If you really want to see a good new British revenge movie, check out Dead Man's Shoes instead - that really is the business. This is just a photocopy of a photocopy.

This is a great movie laden with enigmatic style. A modern, gritty film noir with a powerful and restrained performance by Clive Owen. Compared to other contemporary gangster movies, this one does without cheap action and unmotivated aspects of humor. This is a film taking itself and its moviegoers seriously. The pace and rhythm of the movie and great cinematography accentuates the underlying and half hidden aspects of the script, Clive Owen's acting really proves here that less is more. This movie is indeed one of the two best crime movies to come out of Britain around the turn of the millennium, the other being, of course, "Sexy Beast". These films both combine great style, magnetic performances from the currently best British actors, compelling story lines and sense of warmth emanating from perfectly cast protagonists; Owen and Winstone, respectively.

This is an old master's film, in which an aged director goes back to revisit the kind of story he excelled at when young, with dubious results. A more satisfying example of this kind of nostalgia would be John Frankenheimer's "Ronin," and if you had trouble with that one, you'll hate this one.

What Mike Hodges gives us here is a great wind-up and no pitch. London at night, endless shots of almost-human cars under the street lamps, a threatening bunch of thugs who never really thump each other, it all adds up to considerably less than a whole film.

Much has been made in these reviews about the film's ambiguity. I disagree. All the characters, and I mean all, are painfully aware and articulate about their motivations. Gloomy predictions are made about inevitable conflicts that never materialize, action is either cut short or cut away from. The whole thing is like a Michael Mann thriller with all the thrills scrupulously removed. Or perhaps Hodges is trying to reclaim the genre from Guy Ritchie's jokiness.

The script for this film must really have looked threadbare on the page. The dialog is obvious and arthritic. What works is the acting, the cinematography and the director's depressed atmospherics. Clive Owen demonstrates his considerable presence in a part that is intended to be a deliberate let-down. Charlotte Rampling is fascinating as always, more so than her lines. The rest of the cast ranges from good down to OK.

But in his determination to avoid clichés, the director has also managed to avoid incident, pace and interest. So a nice wind-up, but no pitch, no runs, no hits, and some calculated, deliberate errors.