Cert: 15, 1hr28mins
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Jim Broadbent, Brendan Gleeson, Jodie Whittaker
What’s wrong with Jim Broadbent? In Irish gangster caper Perrier’s Bounty, the poor man spends the entire film not so much acting, as mutely observing, looking for all the world like a stoned owl, or a bemused child who’s just been strapped into the most boring ghost ride in history. It’s perhaps understandable; he’s probably in shock, watching on in numb incredulity at that most heartbreaking of cinematic spectacles: a cliche pile-up.
We watch as one (Cillian Murphy‘s tough-but-loveable loser), skids into another (comedy debt-collecting gangsters), and careers into an out-of-control archetype (Brendan Gleeson‘s ruthless but well-tailored Mr Big). From here, all bets are off: no-one is coming out of this alive. Not Jodie Whittaker‘s heartbroken girl, Broadbent‘s dying dad, the comedy gangsters, the comedy gay gangsters, or the comedy drug dealers (none of these are funny), as Gleeson and his crew chase after Murphy, with the odd splurge of horrific violence thrown in, just so we know to call it “darkly comic”, as opposed to just dark, or comic, or shit.
In truth, it’s not awful, just utterly obvious. In the end, it comes down to this: if you were an up-and-coming director (Ian Fitzgibbon), why on God’s green Earth would you want to be the new Guy Ritchie? Hell, even Guy Ritchie doesn’t even want to be Guy Ritchie any more. Be careful, as they say, what you wish for.
4 out of 10
Stuart McGurk