44 inch chest.. Big chest. Bigger than mine anyway – I’m not sure what I am, probably about a 6 or something. The chest in question belongs to Ray Winstone and is home to a 43 inch heart that has recently been ripped out of its cavity and fed, Steve Buscemi-style, into a wood chipper.
Winstone plays Colin Diamond, an east-end gangster who’s just found out his wife has been having an affair and wants a divorce. Needless to say he doesn’t take the news very well and we first encounter him in a catatonic state passed out on the floor in a pool of blood, broken glass and tears.
Luckily Colin’s fellow gangster pals rally round and, in a show of support, kidnap the French waiter who Mrs Diamond’s been carrying on with, lock him in a cupboard and encourage Colin to torture him slowly to death. (This, girls, is basically the male equivalent of sharing a tub of ice-cream and watching Sex and the City in towelly dressing gowns..)
The real pleasure of this film is in watching its stella cast including Ian McShane, John Hurt and Steven Berkoff doing ACTING! The dialogue and performances are as good as anything I’ve ever seen in the cinema. John Hurt in particular is tremendous and the ferocious Old Man Peanut; essentially Albert Steptoe possessed by Satan.
Unfortunately, the film as a whole doesn’t quite live up to its potential and just seems to peter out a little at the end. Which is a shame as its central theme of male heartbreak is an interesting area that you don’t really see very often on screen. Not that it’s something I can especially relate to; having never really cared that much for another person before. The most I’ve ever been able to muster at the end of a relationship is a sort of vague feeling of disappointment (about on a par with how I feel when my local Tesco sells out of houmous). Still, it’s always useful to see how normal human beings experience emotion..
[...] pipping that scene to the post was the sustained and almost operatic swearing in the marvellous 44 Inch Chest where Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Ian McShane and Stephen Dillane essentially use the words ‘cunt’ [...]