Talulah Riley

Blackly comical writing and direction add a playful slant to what could have been a typically over-serious British crime thriller. And there's also a coming-of-age element to the plot that holds our interest. It's all relatively simplistic, and never really goes anywhere, but the offbeat approach and vividly well-played characters make it worth a look.

Rising-star Brit Jack O'Connell (Skins) plays 19-year-old Adam, a goof-off who thinks it's hilarious when he wrecks his stepdad Peter's (Mullan) pricey car. But Peter is a mobster, and his patience is wearing thin. Without telling Adam's mother (Wareing), he gives Adam a job to help pay for the damage. He'll be a driver for Roy (Roth), who turns out to be a hitman on a nasty mission. This opens Adam up to a world he has never known, and as the stakes begin to rise he has to grow up very quickly. Then things get even more intense when he and Roy encounter a backpacker (Riley) who sends them on a crazed cat-and-mouse chase.

Mixing comedy with suspense isn't easy to pull off, but writer Wrathall and director Viveiros manage it by keeping the humour pitch black and playing everything dead straight. O'Connell portrays Adam as a hapless buffoon who has no idea how to behave in any given situation. But he's deeply likeable, so we root for him in the face of Roy's stony silence. Roth can play this kind of thug in his sleep, but stirs in some wry exasperation and even a low-lying emotional resonance as things develop. And the chemistry between them never feels remotely safe.

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Clearly intent on being a British Hangover/Bridesmaids hybrid, this comedy romp doesn't contain a single laugh. It doesn't help that all of the characters (except perhaps one) are deeply unlikeable, or that the humour is literally centred in the toilet. You have to wonder if anyone read the script before they started making the movie. Or maybe the filmmakers made it up as they went along.

It begins on the morning of a wedding, as bride Alex (Riley) and her bridesmaids (Suvari, Fielding and others) begin to get ready for the ceremony. Meanwhile, groom Jeremy (McNulty) wakes up to a series of pranks staged by his groomsmen (Clarke, Maza and others), plus threats from a crazed ex. Both of them have torturous routes to the church, with obstacles in the form of bodily functions, car crashes, a trip to the emergency room and general idiocy. Maybe these two shouldn't be tying the knot after all.

At least a few of the characters register as real human beings. Goldstein's hapless, hairy groomsman has some vaguely diverting moments that, if not actually funny, have a bit of originality to them due to the actor's full-on physicality. And Fielding's unhappy bridesmaid takes an interesting journey of self-discovery, even though she's subjected to a corny physical gag. Even so, the only likeable character is Riley's bride, who's a genuinely nice person with some depth. Everyone else is mindlessly self-involved and stereotypical, and most of the cast overact their characters into caricatures.

Continue reading: The Knot Review