Or a deal is a deal? What is it with IMDB and different names for films? Well anyway this is a silly 2008 British slice of life British movie. Although it is by no means topical, these are probably my favourite kind of films. So I'm hoping I'll enjoy and you will too. Enjoy!
The cast is a British dream team, I won't bother to list the names because barely any Brits I know watch British cinema let alone anyone else, but just trust me, if you love British cinema, you'll love this cast. It even has fucking Kerry Katona in it!
But certainly the highlight of the cast has to be the lovely Gemma Arterton, she may or may not have been one of the main reasons I watched this film... shame she doesn't appear until around forty minutes into the movie...and then is barely in it for half an hour, she does get a rather lovely sex scene though, just a shame it was with Mackenzie Crook, easily one of the most hideous looking human beings of all time. Even the cannibal gag character gets a complete character arc, even if it is off screen. If I had Gemma cast, I'd want to use her as much as possible.
The film centralises around suicide, a train driver kills someone by accident with his train, twice, in one month. The unspoken rule between train drivers is that if three people jump in front of your train for whatever reason, they'll retire you and give you ten years pay for fear that you can't handle it emotionally.
So Paul, our train driver, goes looking for someone to jump in front of his train and bumps into cannibals and other such 'wacky' failures along the way. Eventually Paul finds someone who has attempted several times to jump off a bridge, Paul almost kills him trying to save him but eventually drops him the offer; £1500, a weekend to spend it on, then he has to jump in front of a train. In a different context, this could make a really fascinating horror thriller. The focus then shifts to the tramps final weekend, the tramp makes reference to God and making right the wrong in his life, so he gets himself cleaned up and a nice suit. Wacky antics ensue and the whole thing goes wrong, what a surprise. And then the piece slows down even further to be more of a character piece about their lives and emotions. It all ends on a predictable twist. The actual moment when Paul is driving the train right at Cassidy is actually really tense and dramatic, easily a highlight of the film. I didn't expect him to actually run him down!
There are some genuinely charming and amusing moments in this film but all in all I was bored. I don't know why, I mean it is all well acted and well written and so on but I just never felt any real attachment to the characters and therefore I didn't really enjoy the piece. Maybe it'll be different when you watch it, maybe you'll think it is a great film, but I've seen many a film like this one and most of which were better.
One of the biggest issues with this film is it is plotless. I think what they were trying to do with the structure of the film is mirror real life. That is fine on paper, but what it means here is that the film never really starts. One plot begins, they stumble into a new plot and the one previous gets dropped. It almost feels like a season long TV series condensed into two hours.
The second is Paul finds out that Three and Out is just a joke, he runs down Cassidy because Cassidy wants to kill himself anyway, fine. But then Paul writes a book about it, makes loads of money and dates Cassidy's daughter. THE END.That is so morally wrong even I couldn't stomach that.
So do I recommend this? I honestly thought this was boring and morally twisted and that is that. I was so uninterested, so unattached that it really left me with very little to say. That being said, you might gel with the characters better, so I still suggest you give it a chance if you got a few hours to fill. Plus Arterton's sex scene is worth the price of admission in the first place!
Think About It!
-Locke
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