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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/19/2009 : 16:09:52
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44 Inch Chest
Louis Mellis and David Scinto are the writing team that gave us the powerful Sexy Beast, which provided such cogent roles for Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone.
Now Winstone has engaged them to create a vehicle for himself and a handful of some truly fine British acting talent, inlcuding Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson, Joanne Whalley, and especially John Hurt. Without prosthetics or sfx, he reinvents himself as Old Man Peanut, egging Winstone on to take revenge on the waiter who dared to sleep with his wife.
In fact, that's what the entire film is about. Yes, it is pared down and yes, it contains some of the sassiest dialogue this side of Harold Pinter. But, somehow, it never feels like a film. More a chapter of a novel - or possibly the 2nd act of a 3-act play.
Some won't mind that, because the journey grabs you around the throat and throttles you as senseless as the first image of Winstone, lying flat out on the floor. You don't know whether he's dead or alive. And that bloody song "[I Can't Live If Living Is]Without You" booms OTT in the background.
It's certainly worth seeing for the acting and the atmos. I just wish it had a more defined structure.
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44 Inch Chest - tinge of spoiler, but not really
