A Violent Man

Portrait of a violent man. Everyone involved should be proud of this production. Fairbrass has never been better.

More like a play than a movie but with cinematic quality. Everyone performs their part carefully and maturely, I believed them all. At the helm is Fairbrass who carries the film with menace and compassion. Following his performance in Muscle, Fairbrass has proven he ihas more subtlety than the extremes of Pat Tate. His choices as an actor have smartly stretched and I'm glad to have my expectations as a fan change with satisfaction.

Ultimately though director, Ross McCall, must take the credit. I'd never heard of him but I'll watch for his future projects with interest too.

I said else where that I thought Craig Fairbrass had a decent performance in him if he got right role and this might be it. OK he's not going to turn up in a Merchant Ivory type offering any time soon but in this role he was very believable and believable without being over the top.

This is a movie with a serious message and I am worried that the kind of men it is trying to reach will simply get off on the violence and the teenage boy type machismo that seems to keep them in an extended childhood. I guess it's about choices really, choices and what you're willing to sacrifice in order to carry on living like an animal with no conscience.

A very powerful, grim but compelling prison drama focused primarily on a prisoner serving life with no chance of ever being released.

The whole movie is set in one prison cell without a single glimpse of the outside world. It's a hard hitting exploration of coming to terms with life with no hope.

The acting is superb which really gives the impact intended by the writer of this extremely grim tale.

Part of me was eager for the movie to end as it was so depressing but I am glad that I watched it. If nothing else it makes the viewer glad not to share such a hopeless future.

My only complaint is that I found the dialogue difficult to understand as the characters tended to mumble a lot. Perhaps it was just the sound recording but I kept having to turn up the volume, yet still I couldn't understand it all.

All in all I thought the movie was very good but don't watch it if you need cheering up.

Heavy hard going. Don't watch if you need cheering up.

Craig Fairbrass, although is by now too typecast for his talent, is brilliant as usual. Carries a dark dark film further than it could have gone without him.

To be fair, there's a bit more to it than that, and Fairbrass is a slightly different character. Here he spends a lot of time contemplating on what it means to be a man that feels nothing. When he's in company of others there's usually fights breaking out or words of wisdom on how to survive. Overall it's an okay film, it never really builds up tension to dramatic key points though. The directing is all over the place, some good, some not so. The music often doesn't work.