-By Rex Roberts

For movie details, please click here.

The brilliance of 44 Inch Chest—the British adore the word brilliant, although it doesn’t adequately describe this (expletives deleted) film from the writers of Sexy Beast—is that we never quite know what’s going on, or who the characters are, in this profane, provocative and profoundly elliptical entertainment. The plot is straightforward: A husband comes home to find his wife abandoning him for another man; he has an emotional breakdown and his mates kidnap the rival to deliver some old-school retribution and hard justice. The characters are colorfully drawn: How could they not be with screenwriters Louis Mellis and David Scinto scripting for an ensemble comprising Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Dillane and Joanne Whalley? Yet we know practically nothing (nuffink, in their cockney patois) about the characters by way of backstory, less about what the future may hold for them, and the present—that is, the 90 minutes we share with them—is wide open to interpretation.

Winstone plays Colin Diamond, the cuckold, a character not far removed from Gary “Gal” Dove of Sexy Beast, a working-class tough who has earned, or perhaps simply appropriated, his share of the good life. His buddies are types we never tire of: McShane as Meredith, a natty gay gambler with a posh pad on the Thames and a taste for lithe young men; Wilkinson as Archie, a patient, empathic pensioner (one might suppose) who cares for his aging mother; Hurt as Old Man Peanut, a foul-mouthed old fart with a weak bladder and strong prejudices; Dillane as Mal, the quiet one, a bit of a plotter. We know they are loyal friends, but whether they are partners in crime, chums from the ’hood, pub mates or something else, we’re left to surmise

Director Malcolm Venville, making his feature debut following a successful career in commercials, moves the narrative forward with dispatch to the abandoned house in derelict London where the gang of five have sequestered “Loverboy,” a French waiter played by Melvil Poupaud. Colin is a wreck, broken by his wife’s betrayal and his guilt over his violent reaction. He drowns his self-pity in drink. (The screenwriters, borrowing a technique from Dennis Potter, periodically slip into Colin’s addled point of view, with Liz Diamond, played by Whalley, vamping her way through her husband’s alcoholic hallucinations.) His mates, meanwhile, attempt to rally him to wreak vengeance on Loverboy, in large part so they can get back to their pubs, clubs and tellies, respectively. Colin, however, must make the choice: Does he subject Loverboy to a slow and painful death, with a little help from his friends, or does he give the man a reprieve?

44 Inch Chest consciously imitates a stage play, with the action occurring for the most part in one room and the characters prone to theatrical extemporization, delivering speeches that beg for a West End adaptation. For all of their brutal swearing, their posturing and threats, they are, push come to shove, better at talk than torture. They even reveal, albeit inadvertently, their vulnerable sides—with the exception of bilious Old Man Peanut and hedonistic Meredith, who nevertheless expound their worldviews with sardonic poetry.
This is to say, 44 Inch Chest takes the piss and gets teary at the same time, an impressive sleight of script. The movie is about fidelity as much as misogyny, forgiveness as well as revenge, expiation as well as anger. The filmmakers let the audience decide whether these old-timers are capable, were ever capable, of the brutality they boast about—as the title of the film suggests, a man is often measured by standards distorted by braggadocio and exaggeration. To quote Plutarch, the real measure of a man is how he bears up under misfortune.