The Gangster film as a genre is one
of formula. Like any other genre, there
are standards and tropes we come to expect to be in most, if the not all, of
the films. There is the innocent guy generally with a girl to protect. He has a
set amount of time to get either a product or money to a crime boss. The crime
boss is generally not introduced until about a third of the way through the
film but his legend is established in other characters conversations. And there
are usually a couple of henchmen who do the dirty work for the main boss.
The origins of the gangster film is
American with the 1912 film The Musketeers
of Pig Alley by DW Griffith one of the earliest examples. The American
gangster film sits proudly alongside the Western as one of America’s finest contributions to
film history. What is very interesting is when the genre is subverted or filtered
through another country’s culture. The most obvious examples in the US are Quentin Tarantino’s 1990s films Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and Guy Richie’s Lock
Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in the UK.
The main problem with the films
listed above is not with the films themselves but rather the influence of them
on films that came after. In the US in the 1990s there were a lot of
films described as Tarantinoesque which were nothing but a pale imitation of
his filmic style. In the UK
it has been arguably worse. While Lock Stock is no masterpiece, it stands as a
towering achievement when stood beside some of the quite appalling films that
came after. But what flows through the US
to the UK will inevitably
flow into Ireland
as well. And it is this flow which brings us to Perrier’s Bounty.
Perrier’s Bounty is directed by talented Irish filmmaker Ian Fitzgibbon (Death of a Superhero) and written by
Mark O Rowe (Intermission, Boy A). It
possesses a heavyweight cast including Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Liam
Cunningham and Jim Broadbent. There is a serious pedigree here. The plot is a
fairly basic one. Michael McCrea (Murphy) has a day to return money owed to
gang boss Darren Perrier (Gleeson). Add to this mix, his father (Broadbent) - who
turns up to make peace with him - and Perrier’s two henchmen (nicely played by
Don Wycherly and Michael Mc Elhatton) who are a constant threat. The film is
set up within the classic gangster structure.
First thing to say and it pains me
to say it a little as I had heard good things, this film is a mess from start
to finish. It falls into the familiar trap of the post Tarantino generation of
having every character sound exactly the same. All the characters talk in a
quite frankly bizarre way, spurting forth with cod philosophy at every turn for
no real reason. It starts to grate 20 minutes in and by the end of the film you
are almost pleading with them through the screen to stop talking. This is a
serious flaw and a real pity as there are some good lines of dialogue
throughout. It is just that they should only have come from one character.
Instead they all just came from the screenwriter.
The acting throughout the film is
uneven with Murphy playing it like his heart isn’t in it. Cunningham does the
best overall with not much to go on. He has become one of our great character
actors and should have really been a bigger star than he is. His delivery of a
great line is one the films few highlights. Looking a woman up and down in a
bar he describes her as ‘dirty, like a bag of carrots’. Gleeson is ok, but he
has done this thing before in better films than this. My heart weeps for
Broadbent who is comically miscast. His bizarre accent, swaying between English
and Irish is absurd. One wonders what possessed him to take the part. There is
also a slightly cringe worthy narration from Gabriel Byrne, the purpose of
which is to seemingly mock film narration. It doesn’t work. All it does is call
to mind narrations that work such as Sam Elliott’s in The Big Lebowski.
Overall, Perrier’s Bounty is not worth the effort to see it. Rowe’s previous
screenplay Intermission makes better
use of his writing talents. This is a muddled film, caught between aping the
1990s English gangster film and trying to add something through an Irish
filter. It succeeds at neither. All involved have gone on to bigger and better
things and for that, one imagines, they can breathe a sigh of relief after
making this film.
