Cast: Melanie Griffith, Tommy Lee Jones, Sting,
Sean Bean, and James Cosmo
Writer and director: Mike Figgis
93 minutes (15) 1988
widescreen ratio 16:9
Arrow DVD Region 2 retail
RATING: 9/10
reviewed by J.C. Hartley
Most reviews of this feature praise the
performances at the expense of the story and carp at the pace, the
understatement and treat it as if it were a poor relation of Get Carter. Apart from the Newcastle
setting, evocatively photographed by Roger Deakins (Jarhead, The Village),
and the gangster elements of the plot, there is little in common with the
earlier movie except that this is another impressive addition to the stable of
British noir.
Brendan (Sean Bean, Silent Hill, Flightplan)
takes a job as a cleaner at The Key Club, a Jazz venue on Newcastle’s quayside
run by Finney (Sting, Lock, Stock &
Two Smoking Barrels), during that town’s American week, and overhears a
plan to intimidate the club owner into signing over his property. An American
businessman Cosmo (Tommy Lee Jones, The
Missing, Men In Black) is in town
buying up property with the tacit approval of the local council in order to
foster urban regeneration; we later discover the plan is part of a
money-laundering scheme while Cosmo faces a Senate inquiry back in New York
Having set-up the scenario, Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), who wrote the
screenplay, as well as directing and composing the incidental music, thwarts
expectations; Finney is no effete club owner but a tough operator with
connections, Brendan is no tough guy just a sensitive artistic soul steeped in
American culture. The film is not a condemnation of American cultural
imperialism; the local council are out to milk the newcomers, local businesses
are showing record profits during American week.
Brendan meets and falls for Kate (Melanie Griffith,
Tempo), who works at a local
restaurant but is involved with Cosmo as an escort/ honey-trap in his wooing of
local council officials. Kate’s attempts to escape Cosmo’s patronage, and
Brendan’s involvement with Finney’s equally dangerous game, set the scene for
violence and tragedy.
Albert Finney apparently turned down the part of
Finney (directorial joke?) as he felt the screenplay was ‘too cutty,’ but the
montage effects, which almost languidly bombard the viewer with images from the
very out-set, wholly compliment the atmosphere of rising tension; streetlights
are reflected in the polished hood of a cruising Jaguar car, a square in the
town contains a huge inflatable Coke bottle like something imagined by Claus
Oldenburg, The Krakow Jazz Ensemble perform a Hendrix-esque rendition of The Stars And Stripes at a civic reception,
violent photographic newsreel images by Weegie, decorate the restaurant of the
same name where Kate works, Brendan’s room is filled with images of Gable and
books by Hemingway, his wardrobe consists of white shorts, crisp white shirts,
chinos and a leather jacket; everything creates a sense not of colonisation but
cultural displacement.
This is a tremendous, overlooked, low-key, haunting
genre movie by a real English auteur and deserves at the very least a place on
the syllabus at film school. There is a fascinating director's commentary as
part of the extras.
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