Out On Blue Six: The Clash

This suitably apt song is going out to our alleged Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, pictured above with his pet polecat Dominic Cummings. Sadly those aren't prison bars they're behind...not yet. 

End Transmission

Boris Johnson Must Go

And so it has been found that the alleged Prime Minister's suspension of parliament was unlawful. 

This is a huge victory for the democracy that hard brexiteers like Johnson falsely claimed leaving the EU was about returning to this country. But we need to go one further; we need to show that Boris Johnson's position is untenable. Please sign this petition demanding he resign now.

Theme Time: Edwin Astley - Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)

It was fifty years ago this week that one of ITC's most enduring crime dramas Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) arrived on our screens.

Starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope as Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk, private investigators who won't let a little thing like death get in the way of their business, whilst Annette Andre starred as Marty's widow, Jeanie.

Unlike much of its stablemates at ITC, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) was, by its very nature, fantastical, and yet at the same time much more down-to-earth in its downbeat depiction of the then swinging London. Perhaps it's that slightly more recognisably real world vibe that has ensured it hasn't dated as much as Department S or Jason King say, whilst the fact that Reeves and Mortimer remade it for two series in the early '00s proved that this was a show that the public still had a lot of time for. 

And then there's that theme tune. A wonderfully evocative, atmospheric track from ITC composer supremo Edwin Astley. It's the sonic equivalent of a tingle running down your spine.

This is What a Hypocrite Looks Like

I mean, if you weren't convince that this perpetrator of austerity (which has been proven to impact upon women hardest of all) wasn't actually a feminist at all then her decision to award Geoffrey Boycott, a man with a conviction for punching a partner twenty-two times, a knighthood ought to remove you of any doubt that actually Theresa May is what a hypocrite looks like. 

That she followed up one of her last acts as PM, the introduction of a domestic abuse bill (a last ditch attempt to secure some kind of legacy) with an act of disgusting cronyism that affords a wifebeater a knighthood, along with her former advisors and staff Robbie Gibb, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, is utterly sickening and says all that we need to know about this Tory government. 

As for Boycott himself, well his words say it all really. On Radio 4's Today programme Martha Kearney began "The Chief Executive of Women's Aid has said -" to which he interrupted with "I don't give a toss about her, luv. It was 25 years ago" It's also worth remembering that Boycott once remarked that he would have to "black up" to receive a knighthood, arguing that they were handed out to West Indian cricketers "like confetti".  That is most emphatically not what a sporting hero looks like and it certainly shouldn't be what a knight of the realm (if we have to have them) looks like either.

Across 110th Street (1972)

A mainstream Blaxploitation picture, Across 110th Street was reviled by critics at the time for its graphic violence and bleak, uncompromising stance. Viewed today, it's a minor masterpiece of '70s pulp cinema; not only satisfying the expectations of the crime genre, but providing salient, searing social commentary too.

It's perhaps easy to see why some contemporary critics baulked at Across 110th Street. Film is often viewed by some as a means of escapism, whereas Barry Shear's film is firmly rooted in the sobering, unflinching reality of the worst aspects of American society, principally the racial divide. Set in New York, the titular address serves as an intersection between Harlem and Central Park - a geographical and social division based on race and class. By 1972, that division was like an open wound. New York's economy was bust and Harlem suffered the worst of such an economic downturn. Middle class residents who could afford to relocate did so, leaving the neighbourhood empty and derelict. Some 24% of the population in Harlem lived on welfare, whilst an estimated 60% of its economy came from the illegal numbers racket of organised crime. Drugs, an escape from the harsh reality of life, were rife. Harlem was a place of little opportunity for its majority black population and, when racial tensions, ran deep this powder keg environment exploded. Riots hit the city in 1964 when an off-duty white police officer murdered a black teenager. Just three years later, in the stifling hot summer of 1967, the US endured major rioting from black communities understandably angry at police brutality and rising poverty and naturally, Harlem again exploded. A year later, in grief-stricken retaliation for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Harlem's business and storefronts were ablaze. It is this reality that Across 110th Street depicts, most memorably in its even handed portrayal of the moral grey areas its cast of characters occupy. 

This isn't your standard cops (good) and robbers (bad) tale, instead it is a character study that helps to reflect the corruption and problems endemic in society. Jim Harris (a sympathetic performance from Paul Benjamin), the murdering crook the police and mob are seeking, memorably and poignantly relates to his girlfriend how, as a black 40 something man with no formal education, a criminal record and a disability, he sees no option other than crime to survive. Compare this admission to the reveal that Anthony Quinn's thirty-three-year police veteran, Capt. Martelli, routinely takes bribes from Harlem's black godfather Doc Johnson (gravel-voiced Richard Ward) in order to supplement the meagre income the city pays him for his service. 

The central, uneasy alliance between the dinosaur Martelli and Yaphet Kotto's liberal, disciplined Lt. Pope is one that has often been compared to the relationship between Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in In The Heat of the Night. Whilst the 1967 is arguably a much better film, I feel the dynamic here is more interesting. For a start it doesn't play on the fish out of water aspect that that film and its countless imitators in the genre depicted. Here, Pope and Martelli operate the same streets, but their viewpoints are wildly different. Pope is angered by Martelli's casual racism and brutal interrogation methods, arguing that such antics "went out with prohibition". It's a telling comment, as Martelli first trod the beat  when prohibition was a recent memory. Quinn's performance is imbued with the jaded, jaundiced eye of a man who has sifted through the sewers for thirty-odd years. He's seen many changes but to him it is, almost literally, the same shit but a different day. His 'crime' isn't necessarily taking bribes, it's the simple fact that in all his long service he's done nothing to improve the situation - a fact he's perhaps slowly coming to realise now at the age of fifty-five and with retirement banging on the door. When he angrily launches himself at Doc Johnson, the mobster accurately comments that he is a man longing to die; not simply because he can't bear the prospect of retirement but perhaps for some retribution for his role in propping up a corrupt, broken system. 

As Pope, Yaphet Kotto is the opposite of Martelli, a college educated police officer who abhors the older cop's fist-flying, but that doesn't mean that he is above using his own physical presence to intimidate suspects or indeed anyone who attempts to block his path. From Harlem himself, he represents upward mobility and a new breed of police officer for whom class and race may not necessarily be a hindrance to getting on, though both he and the film understand that equality is not around the corner. What's interesting is how he interacts with the black community, it's the epitome of that old phrase about black police officers; 'too black for the police, too blue for the brothers'. Nevertheless there's a quiet, devastating determination in Kotto's performance to simply do the right thing that means such concerns are merely minor irritants for him.

The only character who offers no sympathy or redeeming features is Anthony Franciosa's racist charmless mobster Nick D'Salvio, and even then his character is far more multi-faceted and interesting than many other films would depict. D'Salvio, we learn, married into the mob family, a situation which turned his fortunes from mob lackey to gangster number one. With such power comes great expectations and D'Salvio knows deep down that he cannot fulfill them. It is this ineptness and self doubt that leads him to perform in the most disgusting, violent manner, perhaps because he believes that is what is expected of him. It's a great stomach churning, repulsive performance of a little, repugnant man who thinks he is a big man with wit and charm, and it's understandable that audiences feel no empathy for his fate.

Speaking of fates, anyone who has purchased the MGM DVD release here in the UK who hasn't seen the film before will receive an immediate spoiler thanks to the rear of the DVD showing a still image from the final scene of the movie! 

Across 110th Street is a gritty, sweaty expose of '70s American society and a solid marriage between the mainstream and the Blaxploitation film movement. It boasts some strong performances, specifically from Quinn and Kotto whose chalk and cheese partnership has been replicated through the years ever since. You can even see traces of it in the BBC series Life on Mars. And it goes without saying of course that it has a superb soundtrack from Bobby Womack.

Cruel Summer by M.R. Mackenzie

Released today, Cruel Summer is the direct sequel to the critically acclaimed novel In the Silence and the second instalment in the prospective Kelvingrove Park trilogy from M.R. Mackenzie.

In the Silence was a fine addition to the Tartan Noir genre. In Cruel Summer Mackenzie turns up the heat, placing him ahead of the field.

Read my full review at The Geek Show.

Out On Blue Six: Radiohead

....Or you'll never believe what this song's about

Sadly there's only live versions available of this track from Radiohead's second studio album The Bends from 1995, but it loses none of its power. 

I feel and that much of the song's compelling power (live or otherwise) lies in the fact that it is based on the Hungerford Massacre of 1987 and the psyche of its perpetrator, Michael Ryan and his relationship with his mother, just one of 16 fatal victims of that day.

End Transmission

Resurrection Man (1998)

....Or Clockwork Orangeman as it could almost be called.

Resurrection Man is a 1998 film from director Marc Evans that is based on the 1994 novel of the same name by Eoin McNamee. Like that book, McNamee's screenplay takes inspiration from what is arguably the most notorious sequence of killings to occur in Northern Irish history during the Troubles. Between 1975 and 1977, several Catholic men were picked at random during the hours of darkness by an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang known as The Shankill Butchers. The gang earned their name because of the ferocious and brutal way they tortured, mutilated and dispatched victims who were chosen solely for their religion; cleavers, axes and butcher's knives were the tools of their trade (though they weren't above shootings and bombings in their long-running bloody sectarian campaign either) and their ringleader, described by one detective as 'a ruthless, dedicated terrorist with a sadistic streak, regarded by those who knew him well as a psychopath' was one Lenny Murphy. In 1979 eleven of the gang were given 42 life sentences totaling almost 2,000 years for 100 charges including 19 counts of murder. Murphy himself was already in prison on a lesser charge at this point and, as a result, was never convicted of murder. His violent life and sadistic reign of terror came to an end four years later in 1982 however when, pulling up at his girlfriend's home, he was shot twenty-two times by two IRA gunmen.

Centre-stage in this tale is Stuart Townsend as Victor Kelly, our thinly disguised fictional version of Murphy. A naturally good looking man, Townsend brings a degree of dark glamour and kinky, twisted romanticism to the role despite the abhorrent nature of his character, traits which are a world away from the real Murphy who went by the nickname 'Planet of the Apes' on account of his neanderthal looks. What is carried over from fact to fiction however is the theory that Murphy's murderous zeal stemmed from the fact that this great loyalist terrorist had some Catholic blood himself. This appears to stem from the fact that Murphy is a fairly uncommon name amongst Protestants but it is worth saying that is not an unusual one by any means. Whilst Murphy's commitment may well have been driven by suggestions that he himself was the thing he despised the most, a 'Fenian', the film goes one further by depicting his father as an ineffectual and weak-willed man whom many claim to be Catholic. This slur clearly weighs heavily on both Townsend's Kelly and his overbearing mother (played superbly by Brenda Fricker) who each treat the 'man of the house', their father and husband respectively (George Shane), with utter contempt and disdain. Whilst this is clearly a work of fiction and psychological conjecture (Murphy senior was actually a serving member in the UVF) it helps to bolster that other trademark of gangster movies, namely the oedipal nature of the relationship between kingpin son and his beloved mother which stretches all the way back to Cagney's White Heat, a film that the young Kelly is seen to watch in complete awe at one point. Certainly the behaviour of Fricker when Kelly's blonde haired, doe-eyed and pneumatic moll, Heather (Geraldine O'Rawle) comes round is more in keeping with a bitter love rival than a mother simply wanting the best for her child. Freud is further wheeled out in a suggestion of repressed homosexuality too; Kelly mimics oral sex with his pistol as a way to attract the attention of UVF big-hitters, McClure (Sean McGinley) and Darkie (John Hannah), and is shown to lavish much, pseudo-erotic attention on his victims during torture (he's often naked from the waist up too, presumably to spare this peacock's beloved wardrobe any bloodshed); the final deathstroke often coming to resemble a near-ejaculate like bloodletting and a significant release that leaves Kelly near-catotonically spent. It is also revealed that McClure has shown him photographs of 'English boys in bed together'. This revelation comes during a particularly outrageous, drink and drug-fuelled scene that features the pair embracing and almost kissing whilst Jerusalem plays in the Union Jack bedecked backroom of the bar, with McClure wearing an SS cap!  

It's these little moments of loyalist patriotism that actually gives the film it's sense of place. Indeed, what's interesting about Resurrection Man is how, despite its true-life inspiration, it removes itself from much of the Troubles to simply depict instead the story of a serial killer/gangster. Just take a look at the press release blurb that was subsequently used on the DVD release;

'Victor Kelly is a gangster and ruthless murderer - a 'Scarface' for his generation. He is the leader of a gang of killers known as "Resurrection Men" who target victims in a city where boundaries are marked by blood. Victor's cruelty makes him a ghastly local legend, both feared and venerated. On his trail is Ryan, a journalist, fuelled by an obsessive need to discover the truth about the "Resurrection Man" he is unaware of the risk to his own life. "Resurrection Man" is a chilling and controversial film not for the faint-hearted'

I do wonder if this seeming refusal to acknowledge the political situation inherent in the film, both in this blurb and in the film itself (only slurs of 'Taig' and 'Fenian' indicate just what is going on), has something to do with the climate the film was released in; in 1998 a tentative peace process was being delivered in Northern Ireland which eventually came to a greater fruition at the turn of the 21st century. Whatever the reasons, it works to make Resurrection Man a universal film, riffing on notions as wide-ranging as classic gangster or serial killer films, Bonnie and Clyde romance, violence-for-kicks affairs like the aforementioned A Clockwork Orange, and an almost vampiric thirst for blood. Indeed, the scenes of a malevolent, black-clad Townsend stalking the moonlit streets for victims was enough to ensure that he was subsequently cast as Anne Rice's vampire hero Lestat (previously portrayed in cinema by Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire) in the 2002 film, Queen of the Damned.  

I first saw Resurrection Man not long after its release, buying it on VHS. I was interested to watch it for a number of reasons; not least my interest in the Troubles, but also my appreciation of actors such as James Nesbitt, who stars here as Ryan, the journalist on Kelly's trail, and who was at the time riding high with his success in ITV's Cold Feet  - this film affording him the opportunity to move away from comedy and light drama play the kind of heavy dramatic role he has subsequently proved just as adept at - and Derek Thompson who, since 1986, is best known for playing Charlie Fairhead in Casualty, but whose career prior to this (at present) thirty-three-year role included several Troubles-related films. Thompson took a break from Casualty, then in it's eleventh year, to play the role of Herbie Ferguson, the detective investigating the brutal murders - the last original role he has played in his career as the past twenty odd years has seen him continue in the role of nurse Fairhead. There's a reunion, of sorts, between him and his old friend Brenda Fricker, who played Megan Roach in the first five years of Casualty, though they share no actual scenes on film together. Amongst the other familiar Irish faces, there's also a fine supporting turn from the great James Ellis as a veteran seen-it-all reporter and mentor to Nesbitt, though sadly he disappears from the film once the action ramps up.

I remember watching Resurrection Man at the time and thinking 'my God, but Belfast is a bleak place', so imagine my surprise when the credits rolled around to reveal that the film had actually been shot on my own doorstep, in Warrington, Liverpool and Manchester! Indeed, plenty of scenes are shot on streets I actually know, including Legh Street in Warrington, which once housed the now demolished grand Victorian bath house that proves central to the film in its latter stages, whilst its exterior is also featured specifically in a scene in which Nesbitt questions some workers from a Chinese takeaway. The location work, aided by some good cinematography (that late 90s look, before digital colour grading took hold) all help to create a grim, desolate sense of place, with the former (so resolutely not being Belfast) helping to give that sense of near-dystopic hinterland that compliments the film's refusal to be too tied down to the reality of the setting.

As you can tell, I like Resurrection Man enough to still keep returning to it twenty-one-years after its release, though it's not a masterpiece by any means. Structurally it's somewhat unsound; what may have worked well on the page struggles to make much of an impact on the screen, specifically the implication that Kelly represents the dark side of Ryan's nature he struggles to keep in check, as evinced by his drunken beating of his wife, the local casualty doctor (Zara Turner) and his overall fascination with Kelly's violence which suggests he does what Ryan can only dream of. Both men even fall for the same woman; O'Rawle's Heather. The issue here being of course that neither man is truly likeable, which can be a stumbling block for some audiences, though Ryan does at least relinquish the grip his demons has on him thanks to his experience of the unrepentant, unreconstructed Kelly and returns to his wife, in reconciliatory mood. Director Marc Evans aims for a sort of Scorsese style in his eclectic use of '70s rock music to score scenes of revelry and violence (infamously, Mud's 'Tiger Feet' is used over the savage kicking of a Catholic in Kelly's local, whilst more satisfyingly, The Walker Brothers' 'No Regrets' plays as Herbie comes to arrest Kelly, with Heather offering her lover her best Bonnie Parker smile) but the freeze frames he often employs during such music-laden sequences are distinctly Guy Ritchie, himself no stranger to the positives of a good magpie-like soundtrack. Viewed at the time, these tricks may seem like stealing but, watched now with some distance between it, it serves as an interesting museum piece of the stylings from the turn of the century British cinema.   

Produced by Andrew Eaton and executive produced by Michael Winterbottom, Resurrection Man is a dark and unprepossessingly dour and dank psychological thriller that some audiences may find hard to stomach. Whilst it's nowhere near as gratuitously violent as any number of grimy American torture-porn horrors you can name that subsequently rose to the surface in the years after its release, it often reviles simply by what is implied or what is *just about* seen or suggested, though the real root of revulsion of course stems from the fact that what you witness is based on actual events.

Widows (2018)

"...Unlike most blockbuster thrillers, Widows genuinely feels like it has something to say, with McQueen and Flynn’s take on La Plante’s gender subversion of your typical late 70s/early 80s London-set crime story becoming something akin to a Great American Drama of Our Times; inequality, opportunity, racism, misogyny, poverty, corruption, violence and greed, it’s all there..."

Read my full review at The Geek Show

Wordless Wednesday: The Real Peaky Blinders

The Interrogation of Tony Martin (2018)

It was 20 August 1999 when 55-year-old Norfolk farmer Tony Martin decided to take the law into his own hands. Coming across two burglars in his home, the appropriately named Bleak House, Martin armed himself with a shotgun and proceeded to fire at the intruders, wounding one and killing the other, a 16-year-old boy called Fred Barras. When the police subsequently arrested him for murder, the case understandably took a nation that believes that an Englishman's home is his castle by storm. It was perhaps the last great British cause célèbre of the last century, dominating the media with countless front pages and tabloid editorials, with protests outside court as people leapt to Martin's defence, and politicians weighing in with their two pennies worth both for and against his actions. 

Writer/director David Nath has a solid track record as both a documentarian for Channel 4 and a dramatist. The People Next Door, The Watchman and Unspeakable are examples of the latter, and The Interrogation of Tony Martin is no exception. This is a verbatim drama, scripted from the actual police interview recordings, set almost exclusively within the four grey walls of the interview room. It is also largely a three-hander, focusing on Steve Pemberton as Martin and Daniel Mays and Stuart Graham as his interrogators. 

Fresh off the back of an impressive live broadcast of Inside Number 9 to mark Halloween last month, Pemberton is pitch perfect as Martin, imbuing his grey gammon featured middle aged man with a perceived lifetime of injustice simmering away behind bitter eyes. His performance takes in just a handful of days after the incident; from the bewildering statement of a man arguably in shock to a combative, pompous and remorseless self-appointed defender, not just of his home, but of the letter of the law itself. Through it all Mays and Graham are patient, dogged and painstaking as they attempt to uncover the truth behind these erratic statements.

I suppose enough time has gone by to make the ins and outs of this case less known in some audiences mind, but for those of us who remember it only too well, The Interrogation of Tony Martin does little to alter our view of the events. If you weren't even born or old enough to recall it, then I'm sure you'll be gripped and surprised to see the drama play out. I don't want to spoil it for you, but the fact remains that Martin's version of events were not as clear as he would have the world believe and it was only right (in my view at least) that he was successfully prosecuted for murder.

Nath's film does however provide some context to Martin's actions and his frame of mind. Despite his protestations in the interview that he is 'not strange', all the evidence points to the contrary; he dismantled the top and bottom of his staircase to create a hazard for potential intruders just like the pair who arrived at his home on that fateful night, and he slept fully dressed in work clothes and boots with a shotgun and ammo always close at hand. Tony Martin was a fearful, resentful and indignant man who blamed incidents of attempted sexual abuse as a child as a reason for his behaviour. It was this mindset that was subsequently diagnosed as paranoid personality disorder when his conviction for murder was reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility on appeal.

Unfortunately Nath chooses to conclude his film with a peculiar coda that allows the real Tony Martin to have his say. Returning to Bleak House for the first time since 1999, the 70-something Martin remains as conceited and pugnacious as the investigating officers and the original trial's prosecution proved. It's quite unsavoury to witness his impenitence, his prickly refusal to feel any sympathy for Barras or his family, and the sick anecdote he has from prison that he seemingly finds humourous. It's an odd note for Nath to end on, leaving as bad a taste in the mouth for his film as the one we feel for the incident itself. Still, it proves that the old adage of criminals always returning to the scene of the crime to be true...if only for the TV cameras.

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

"I hope that's a sandwich you're reaching for because whatever it is, you're gonna have to eat it!"

The Laughing Policeman is the fourth book in the series of ten Swedish novels featuring detective Martin Beck by husband and wife team - and originators of Nordic Noir - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, who just happen to figure high in my list of favourite authors. It's a novel that grips like a vice from the off, depicting a lone gunman's massacre of the passengers of a Stockholm bus, one of whom was an off-duty policeman known to Beck. Assigned the case, Beck and his team must piece together how and why their dead colleague  came to be on the bus, discovering just as much about him as they do the murderer. 

Given the premise, it's easy to see why Hollywood were interested. Stuart Rosenberg's film relocates the action to San Francisco but loses so much along the way. 

I still don't understand the decision to start the film not with the multiple shooting (or indeed the Vietnam protest that features in the novel) but with events that lead up to the incident on the bus; a peculiar narrative choice that robs some of the mystery inherent in the story by revealing information to audiences that would not figure until much later in the source novel.

Equally missing is Sjöwall and Wahlöö's purpose behind the Martin Beck series. These novels were not just mystery thrillers, they were a textual exploration of the so-called 'Third Way' (between Communism and Capitalism) of Sweden's welfare experiment and, as such, served as a critique of Swedish society throughout the 1960s. In their novels, the bureaucrats and town planners, the rich and the destitute, were just as important as the cops and criminals. Their starting point was that something had gone profoundly wrong in Swedish society and their central protagonist, Martin Beck, was the consummate professional policeman who not only attempted to administer cures but was also wearily sick from what he viewed and experienced. 

Whilst Sjöwall and Wahlöö were often happy to cite their influence in crime fiction arguably stemmed from America, transplanting their story to there essentially makes it little more than an imitation of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels (novels that the husband and wife claim to have been initially unaware of) and the cliches of the traditionally American policier are all too apparent in Rosenberg's film. Walter Matthau takes the role of Beck (here renamed Jake Martin) and is admirably dour and dyspeptic but is also a good deal less empathetic than the character in the books. Here, he's not averse to slapping suspects (and women) around, and is placed in the midst of stereotypical domestic disharmony (in the novel, Beck and his wife had already become estranged by this stage, having realised they married in haste as teenagers and no longer really know one another). Matthau, still more famous for his comedic roles at this stage, depicts the glumness of the character admirably, which is just as well as - considering the script elects to remove the very reason why the whole affair is called 'The Laughing Policeman' (Beck's daughter presents him the old music hall record on Christmas Day, and the novel ends with him laughing) - we're left to presume the title must be ironic. (Some territories - including I think the UK, briefly at least - even retitled the film as An Investigation of Murder to avoid confusion).

Rosenberg attempts to make much of San Francisco's colour, perhaps to compliment the integrity of the novels dissection of society, but with bearded ladies, busty strippers, Hare Krishna devotees and obese life models are wheeled out, it sometimes feels like overkill. Crucially, the appeal is lost. If you're from an English-language speaking country, Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Sweden is instantly exotic, fresh and original. This is just another American crime story and the procedural elements that are so engaging on the page feel like an abundance of red herrings and dead ends on the screen.

One of the things I really liked about this adaptation however is the casting of Louis Gossett Jr. as Larrimore - he's the one responsible for that glorious bit of dialogue (spoken to a pimp he's just floored) I included at the top of the review. The casting of an Afro-American actor in the Kollberg role helps to draw out the bigotry of Bruce Dern's Larsen, and he lights up the screen whenever he appears. Unfortunately, the adaptation rather reduces his role as Beck/Martin's friend, partner and confident, preferring instead to focus much more on Larsen. The character of Gunvald Larsson remains a highlight in all of the Beck novels, a brusque yet strangely loveable viking who serves as both action man and comic relief. Dern was no stranger to portraying the ugly side of human nature and he nails the roughhousing nature and aforementioned bigotry, but the character's perpetual (comic) exasperation is somewhat underplayed.

I know my review may seem a little unfair but it is only because I am such an admirer of the novels that I can't help but see the missed potential and flaws in the film. I should point out however that this film was my introduction to Martin Beck, having watched this film for the first (and, until today, only time in the '90s). If you have no prior knowledge or experience of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's writing and you like a good '70s crime drama then this is still enjoyable enough, though not the best that 'New Hollywood' had to offer in this field. If you are a fan of the Martin Beck books and are looking for a good, faithful adaptation to watch then look no further than Bo Widerberg's Mannen på taket (aka Man on the Roof) from 1976, based on the seventh book in the series, The Abominable Man. Interestingly, the actor chosen to play Beck in that film, Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt, was also known for his comic roles, just like Matthau.

Political Drilling

Caught this film on last night's Channel 4 News. Very interesting way to consider the kind of language our hypocritical MP's use in comparison to the present moral panic of drill music.

The full music video is on twitter here

And it's worth remembering that politicians don't just use the language of violence, they enable actual violence the world over. As one of the YT comments under the video puts it; "What's more dangerous, one man in Peckham with a knife or a government that sells billions of pounds worth of weapons to a Saudi dictatorship that routinely murders thousands of innocent Yemenis?"

A Prayer Before Dawn (2018)

"...Starring as Billy Moore is Joe Cole, a former National Youth Theatre player and Screen International Star of Tomorrow recipient. Cole has been no slouch in the past few years, notching up impressive credits from his breakout role as John Shelby in the hit BBC period crime drama Peaky Blinders to a BAFTA-nominated performance in the Black Mirror episode, Hang the DJ. He has even courted Hollywood with roles in last year’s veterans drama Thank You For Your Service and 2015’s cult horror Green Room, but it’s perhaps fair to say that for all that he still isn’t a household name. That slight anonymity actually works in A Prayer Before Dawn‘s favour, because what’s integral to this film is Billy’s foreignness. It is simply Cole’s milk-white torso, rather than the star status of an A-lister, that makes him stand out from the broiling tumult of similarly semi-naked and heavily inked Thai convicts.  As the only westerner and English speaker incarcerated there, the bewilderment and isolation he feels is key to his specific ordeal and this is palpable for the audience too, as we are forced uncomprehending down this hellhole alongside him. The danger he faces, as warders and inmates bark and threaten, is credible in a way that a bigger name with a greater baggage of roles behind him would simply be unable to pull off. We know that just around the corner the trailer is waiting for them…with the lesser known Cole, you can believe he’s actually living this nightmare. This may not be the film that affords him the mainstream commercial breakout that is surely on the horizon, but the kudos it will gain in critical and professional circles is further proof of Cole’s ability to pick his roles well...."

Read my full review at The Geek Show

Death Wish II (1982)

Michael fucking Winner. A repulsive tyrant of a man who couldn't direct traffic, he reached his nadir (or found his level, depending on which way you look at it) with the Death Wish movies - films that allowed his tacky impulses and base crude desires to run wild.

The original 1974 movie Death Wish was based on the novel of the same name written by Brian Garfield some two years earlier. Garfield's inspiration came from his own brushes with crime; his wife's purse being stolen and his car vandalised. On each occasion, Garfield's immediate response was a desire to kill those responsible, but he quickly brushed such thoughts aside as the primitive impulses they clearly were and decided to write instead about a man who not only succumbs to those initial thoughts and impulses but who finds he's unable to escape them once he's exacted his revenge. The novel was released to favourable reviews but was not a bestseller. Despite this, film producers Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts showed an interest and purchased the rights for a big screen adaptation. Their original plan was for Sidney Lumet to direct and Jack Lemmon to star as the vigilante, with Henry Fonda co-starring as the detective on his trail. 

Let's just pause for a moment to think how brilliant that would have been. 

But it was not to be. Lumet chose to direct Serpico instead and the project went to Winner, who immediately cast Charles Bronson. The veteran tough guy thought he was miscast, suggesting instead a "weaker kind of man...(like) Dustin Hoffman" (presumably he must have just seen Straw Dogs?), but was drawn to the premise of the film because he too admitted to a secret desire for vigilantism. It proved to be a massive boost to his career and, thanks to the sequels, kept him in work for much of the 1980s despite really being, in the words of 80s hero Roger Murtagh, 'too old for this shit'.

Garfield himself was appalled by Winner's take on his story, arguing that it advocated violence rather than condemned it. "They made a hero out of him. I thought I'd shown that he'd become a very sick man" he said, immediately penning a follow-up novel entitled Death Sentence to repent for the sins of the film adaptation. A loose adaptation of that novel would eventually see the light of day in 2007 with Kevin Bacon in the lead. But it was in 1982 that Death Wish got its first official sequel, thanks to the persistence of Hollywood's most outspoken outsiders, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Cannon Films, who were hungry to capitalise on the market potential of a movie franchise.

The story is pretty much a retread of the original film. Now residing in LA, architect Paul Kersey decides to dole out his own brand of hard justice once again following the rape and murder of both his housekeeper and his daughter, the latter of whom was still catatonic from the rape she endured in the first film. So we get a wide-eyed, mute Robin Sherwood staring directly to the voyeuristic camera whilst she is gang-raped in unflinching detail. Cheery stuff hmm?

Winner, who sickeningly proclaimed "rape doesn't date!" when promoting the production, immediately fell foul of the British Board of Film Classification thanks to the unsettling voyeuristic and salacious male fantasy tone he brought to the the two rape scenes. The BBFC censor edited James Firman described the film as being "about as irresponsible a filmmaker could be about the treatment of rape for purely commercial ends. This director is simply trying to stir up as much controversy as possible because he's in desperate need of a hit". Four minutes were subsequently edited from the film for its release in the UK and this edited version is still the only one available in the UK (though the previously censored rape of the daughter is shown in the Cannon Films documentary Electric Boogaloo to highlight the film's trouble with the BBFC. It is, as you would expect, sickening; the film's original screenwriter and Cannon scribe David Engelbach described, in the same documentary, Winner's directorial choices when approaching rape as simply there to "to get his rocks off. The script did not need it" Needless to say Winner had heavily revised Engelbach's screenplay prior to the commencement of shooting). It's interesting to compare how censorship differs in the US and the UK; here censors are more mindful of violence whereas in the US, the MPAA get the scissors out for sex. However, in regards to this film, they clearly found sexual violence less of a problem than they might have done with consensual sex. I find that quite disturbing really.

Repugnant, exploitative, sleazy and grubby, Death Wish II no doubt achieved everything Cannon and Winner wanted. After all, neither producers or director ever seemed to aim for greatness, preferring instead publicity, notoriety and money.  The offensiveness doesn't just stop at the premise and the action on display either; the screenplay never once gives any attention, insight or motivation to Bronson's character, which means there's a huge void at the core of the film. This lifelessness carries over into Bronson's lethargic acting style and Winner's sleepwalking direction, which only ever comes alive when some poor actress is made to strip before the camera ahead of being brutalised. Perhaps tellingly, Winner never once shoots his leading lady, Jill Ireland, in the nude - why? Because Ireland was Mrs Charles Bronson and he'd have clearly done some violence for real if Winner ever suggested she disrobe in such a distasteful, disturbing scenario.

Oh and let's add something else to the litany of unsavoury things Winner was - lazy. Isaac Hayes was recommended for the score to this film but Winner chose instead Led Zep legend Jimmy Page. Why? Because Page lived next door to Winner. Page's score was subsequently nominated for a Razzie, but let's face it the whole stinking film deserved to be put in the incinerator.

Book Review: In the Silence by M.R. Mackenzie

In the Silence is the debut novel of of Glaswegian author M.R. Mackenzie and is another fine addition to the Tartan Noir genre.

The story concerns former Glasgow girl now Rome-based academic Dr Anna Scavolini who returns home in the run up to Christmas 2009 for the birthday of her best friend from school, redheaded party girl Zoe. Within hours of touching down, Anna not only meets up with her school crush but she goes on to find his dead body in snowy Kelvingrove Park! With the police alternating in treating her as a suspect and an irritant, Anna feels she has no option but to investigate the murder herself but, as the bodies start to stack up and it becomes clear a serial killer is in their midst, Anna may come to regret her impulsive decisions.

This was a real page turner of a book. I know its somewhat cliched to say such a thing but I genuinely haven't read a crime novel that has kept me both gripped and guessing such as this in a long, long time. Mackenzie's flair for a gripping storyline is apparent in his central mystery densely populated by red herrings, and it is matched only by his knack for both setting and dialogue. Just like the very best in Tartan Noir, Mackenzie's novel is set in a recognisable and atmospheric Scottish city, in this case Glasgow, and boasts an ear for the dialect and wit of that area. He gives his best lines to the character of Zoe, who provides some much needed light relief in what becomes a strong, bloody tale of revenge and redemption. With themes including gender inequality, the inherent failings of the justice system, rape, domestic abuse and mental illness, In the Silence is (like the very best work of Denise Mina - in particular her Garnethill trilogy), is a novel which possesses a strong social conscience and it does not shy away from the big issues, often in powerful, uncompromising detail. With that in mind, it  therefore needs a character like Zoe to balance out the drama and remind us that ordinary life is continuing in parallel to the dark underbelly of the city.

But what of Dr Scavolini herself? Well, I've seen some reviews on Amazon say she's a little unlikeable (albeit with good reason as it soon becomes clear) but personally I don't see that criticism all that much. Perhaps she comes across a little aloof precisely because she's effectively a stranger in her hometown and so clearly the chalk to Zoe's more down to earth cheese. But  I actually found it very easy to sympathise with Anna right from the off, especially when she arrives in frozen Glasgow for Zoe's party and is all but ignored by the party girl and left to her own devices on the corner of the dancefloor for the whole night! Bit off, Zoe! The revelation that Anna has her own problems, namely bipolar disorder and is rather foolishly foregoing her pills, is sensitively and intelligently handled and adds a texture to some of her subsequent actions and social interactions that feels authentic. If I had one criticism regarding this side of her character it's that I'd actually liked a little more time focused on the implications and some greater clarity on her initial decision making, but I guess the central mystery has to come first.

All in all, this was a thoroughly enjoyable debut novel that has much promise for the future. I personally hope that we return to Glasgow and Anna and Zoe but I've a feeling whatever M.R. Mackenzie chooses to do next will be worth your attention. If you like Denise Mina and Tartan Noir then do yourself a favour, head over to Amazon and buy this book, you'll love it. The long winter nights are just around the corner and this will be perfect for them. Just don't have nightmares!

The Violent Enemy (1967)

The Violent Enemy is a passable late '60s British thriller that is actually based on an early Jack Higgins novel (back when he was writing as Hugh Marlowe) entitled A Candle for the Dead. Anyone familiar with Higgins will spot his trademarks here; the former committed IRA man who now finds himself with a conscience forced to do one last job is a premise that the author would go on to explore in a number of novels (and their film adaptations) including The Eagle Has Landed, A Prayer for the Dying and those dismal '90s made-for-TV cheapo thrillers starring the likes of Rob Lowe and Kyle McLachlan. Here, it's the turn of Tom Bell as Sean Rogan, an explosives expert who is persuaded to break out of an English gaol to sabotage a Dublin electrics base that helps makes arms for the UK military.  

Bell was a fine actor who didn't get much opportunity to become the leading man he could so easily have been, so it ought to come as no surprise that he dominates what is effectively a small B movie. I haven't read the novel on which it is based (Higgins novels are something of a rites of passage for blokes, along with those of Sven Hassel or Alistair Maclean, and I stopped reading Higgins novels as a very young man when I realised how interchangeable and unoriginal they all were) but I'm guessing on the printed page Rogan was an older man than the one that Bell depicts. There's a lot of talk about the old days and the cause he shares with mastermind Colm O'Moore (played here by Ed Begley, and sporting a surprisingly not too shabby Irish accent it has to be said) that seem a little silly coming from such a young man and it doesn't convince that both he and the much older O'Moore were once brothers-in-arms. It's a stretch of credulity I don't mind though if it means we have Bell.

As for the rest of the cast well, Susan Hampshire is sadly miscast as Rogan's love interest, Hannah, an idealistic young Irish woman who has fallen for the romance of the old tales of rebellion and is initially immune to the realities of the here and now. Hampshire struggles with the Irish accent, as does Bell too on occasion, and seems altogether too 'nice' to convince as the character. The distinguished Irish actor Noel Purcell lends a touch of much needed authenticity as a former revolutionary now lame and running a sympathetic pub and acting as the fixer, though there's some unintentional merriment for viewers in one scene where he instructs his guests to the sitting room, as his brogue and whistling teeth makes it sound more like 'the shitting room'! 

Another trope of Higgins' work rears its head in the appearance of two London gangsters who are employed to help with O'Moore's plot, get up Rogan's nose, and who the audience would have to be incredibly dense not to suspect of having an ulterior motive that means they are the real villains of the piece. These characters are played by Jon Laurimore and that archetypal '60s face, Michael Standing. I always liked Standing and lament the fact that his career was all but over by the mid '70s. He is of course best remembered for being the man who didn't realise he was 'only supposed to blow the bloody doors off' for Michael Caine in The Italian Job. Paired up against Bell, the pair get the most from the fractious protagonist/antagonist relationship within the screenplay. 

I'd love to be able to say that The Violent Enemy is one of those unsung gems of British '60s cinema but it's actually just one to file alongside the likes of When Eight Bells Toll and, like that film, feels and looks not unlike a slightly bigger budget episode of the action orientated TV dramas of the era - many of which Sharp directed. It's also one of those sentimental films that depict IRA men as misty eyed romantics clad in long grey overcoats walking to and from the pub to the sound of fiddly tin whistle march on the soundtrack. Watchable, but nothing more.

Double X: The Name of the Game (1992)

"An underrated British crime thriller with a superb cast and a car chase that actuals thrills. Made on a shoestring budget but with good production values. Entertaining. Great value for money"

Not my words you understand (the spelling mistake isn't mine either) but the words of a glowing five star review of the film on Amazon that is written by none other than...

Shani Grewal - the film's writer, producer and director. 

Hmm. You could have at least used an alias mate?

In reality, Double X: The Name of the Game feels like the kind of film a classroom full of eight year olds might come up with if you'd shown them The Long Good Friday and asked them to have a go at making something similar. But, because it has a rather unlikely star in the shape of comedian Norman Wisdom, it's a film that has a certain attraction for anyone of a certain age and British (or perhaps Albanian, given he was huge there). Yes, that's right little Norman Pipkin has gone deadly serious in his old age, playing the timid employee and criminal brains of a gangland empire known as 'The Organisation' who wants out after seeing how deadly the muscle around him is. 

And what an odd organisation it is; firstly there's Bernard Hill, chewing the scenery as a crippled Oirish sadist called Iggy Smith. Hill clearly knows full well he's a world away not only from Boys From The Blackstuff but also the last big screen crime thriller he was involved in, Bellman and True, and sets about treating the material with the disrespect it deserves. Then there's Simon Ward on oily form as the organisation's Mr Big, who harbours ambitions to become a politician - thereby entering a more nefarious occupation than the one he currently holds, obviously. Lastly there's Leon Herbert as a henchman - he has 'previous', having had at that point recently starred as one of Leslie Grantham's minders in the crime series The Paradise Club.

It's odd to see Wisdom in such an environment - though he was no stranger to straight drama, having a straight(ish) role in The Night They Raided Minsky's and having already played an old con in an episode of Bergerac in the '80s - and, despite it being a little disconcerting to see him wielding a gun or performing in a couple of action sequences (look out for a scene where he has to slap his duplicitous, backstabbing girlfriend, played by Gemma Craven; it's the weakest slap in cinema history - though Craven flies across the room like she's been hit by Ricky Hatton!) and his daughter, played by future Red Dwarf star Chloë Annett, is clearly young enough to actually be his granddaughter, there's nevertheless something mildly charming about seeing him branch out in such fare so late in the game. Plus of course, there's the residual affection we feel just because it is Norman Wisdom after all. 

The film is all over the shop structurally, opening with William Katt as a former cop with the Chicago PD vacationing in Scotland before we get Wisdom's convoluted backstory. Initially it feels like both actors are jostling for star position. Katt is clearly there to attract the US market but, given that around this time he was perhaps best known for being Perry Mason's assistant on TV, he's hardly the Hollywood A-lister parachuted in to raise this low budget British thriller into the big league. It also doesn't help that he's as wooden as hell, providing the film with a voice over that has all the energy of a bile bean - although, given a twist down the line that might be intentional? (No, I'm being way too kind here I think!). Pretty much immediately after the opening credits, Katt checks in at a hotel and stumbles upon the assassination attempt of fellow guest Norman Wisdom and comes to his rescue with a nifty car chase. With our leads fleeing the scene, we then flashback to some three years earlier and, narrated now by the more wide-awake Wisdom, we learn just how he came to be in this mess in the first place. You see, his old gangland colleagues aren't happy with him just going on the run like that and now they want him dead. Plot twists quickly follow and, inbetween the odd explosion and hail if machine gun bullets, it soon becomes clear that you can't trust anyone in this particular game - whatever it's bloody name is! Unfortunately, the whole thing is so poorly put together and misjudged that it's really hard to care all that much about what's going on, despite the twists and turns or the occasional bit of good stuntwork. 

Double X: The Name of the Game isn't the worst British gangster movie out there (that's probably still the ultra-cheapo Shadow Run, starring Michael Caine and James Fox) but it runs close. It may have been made in 1992, but it already seems dated for then, feeling more like a mid '80s production with its jazzy score and neon blue hued credits. It's one to watch for a certain nostalgia I guess, as there are brief roles for Derren Nesbitt and Vladek Sheybal in his final film role, but overall it's the kind of film that reminds you - aside from the odd hit from Handmade and the reliability of Merchant Ivory - just how low the British film industry had sunk by the 1980s and early '90s and how little money it was actually expected to make films on. If you're a glutton for punishment this might serve as a 'good' double bill with Tank Malling.

When he's not writing Amazon reviews about his own films, Shani Grewal directs television dramas such as the daytime soap Doctors and the Saturday evening stalwart that is Casualty. It's probably more on his level.

Clubbable

I love the covers of old paperback novels. The 60s and 70s were a golden age for jacket designs like this

This is the cover of the Fontana paperback of Reginald Hill's 1970 crime novel, A Clubbable Woman. This was Hill's debut, the first to introduce his chalk and cheese detectives Dalziel and Pascoe. As they attempt to solve the murder of a rugby player's wife, their investigations discover that she was just that little but too friendly with the rest of the squad.

In my teens I used to devour Hill's books, spurred on by the TV debut of his creations in 1996. A Clubbable Woman was the first book to be dramatised for the BBC in what proved to be a long running series starring Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan. 

Resnick (1992-'93)

British TV has always been awash with TV detectives, but they fall into two distinctive categories; there's the made-for-TV cops, and then there's those adapted from pre-existing bestselling crime and thriller literature. In the '80s and '90s it's fair to say that the BBC dominated the former category with a gold run of populist fare that featured the likes of Shoestring, Bergerac, and Spender. Whilst adaptations were principally ITV's domain, the jewels in the crown consisting of  David Suchet's Poirot, Jeremy Brett's definitive Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse and A Touch of Frost. 

The BBC's only real popular foray into adaptation was Lovejoy, but that genial, comfortable Sunday night offering was so far removed from the grubby, cutthroat violent and X rated nature of Jonathan Gash's original novels, and the programme only adapted a couple of the books in the first series anyway, so that need not detain us further.

So at some point in the '90s the BBC woke up to the sobering fact that ITV had the monopoly and thus they attempted to produce adaptations of other popular literary detective series for themselves. Perhaps the most successful (in terms of long-running at least) of these was Dalziel and Pascoe, the chalk-and-cheese sleuthing duo created by Reginald Hill. That series got off to a very strong start thanks to fabulously droll adaptations from Alan Plater and Malcolm Bradbury no less, and ran for eleven years - though they abandoned the source material provided by Hill very early on, offering us the law of diminishing returns. 

But on a par with those early Dalziel and Pascoe adaptations is a mini-series from four years earlier - the BBC's attempts to bring John Harvey's sandwich eating, multiple cat owning and jazz loving Nottingham based cop DI Charlie Resnick to the screen. The channel made just two adaptations of the Resnick novels - Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment - starring Tom Wilkinson and, having watched them for the first time just a couple of years ago, I've been scratching my head to think why they didn't go on to adapt every single one of them because, quite simply, this would have given ITV's Morse and Frost a good run for their money.

It helps of course that the author himself, John Harvey, adapted the novels for TV. But crucially the director of Lonely Hearts, Bruce MacDonald, understands the material beautifully and gives us something unique that still stands out as a distinctive piece of drama some twenty-four years later. Crucially MacDonald's style, combined with his knowledge and understanding of Harvey occasionally somewhat fragmentary writing style, works in close harmony to deliver an deeply atmospheric piece. Like the jazz beloved of our central character, Harvey's writing often strays from the narrative through line to provide quirky and unusual flourishes or glimpses of other themes. This is best exemplified in the way that we see the team at Nottingham CID (which includes a youngish David Neilsen before he headed to the cobbles of Coronation Street, looking rather different with short hair and a military moustache, and actor/writer William Ivory as a scene-stealing leery, neanderthal cop who despite his blunt methods gets the job done in a way we cannot help but admire) involve themselves in other secondary cases or how we catch references to their home lives. All of these instances help lend a sense of multi-dimensionality and authenticity to the proceedings.

That said, MacDonald's directorial style isn't going to be to everyone's tastes and it is not without its flaws. In creating such a distinctive atmosphere it often runs the risk of being a touch too oblique, with sections of footage done, POV style, from the perspective of our protagonists, often lingering on minor details and abstract items. And there are a lot of moments set at night were everything is just so damn dark - but that might actually be down to the quality of the off-air recording from 1992 (sadly these adaptations have never been officially released and only bootlegs are available) that I watched, I don't know.

The world of Resnick as created by John Harvey is both a well-written and addictive one, and I've enjoyed reading a few novels in recent years. Tom Wilkinson inhabits the character depicted upon the page rather well (though I perhaps expected and would have liked a more native Notts accent) and accurately captures that kind of melancholic detective who seems to have a black cloud perpetually hovering above his head and feels a little too much really well. It's a cliche now I guess, the over-empathetic policeman, but I don't imagine it was at the time. 

The second adaptation, Rough Treatment, arrived a year later in 1993. It was another classy production but, with a different director (Peter Smith) at the helm it felt a little lacking with little to lift the proceedings above watchable, despite Jim Carter and Tom Georgeson as a good pair of chalk and cheese crooks and Sheila Gish having fun as the bored and frustrated wife of a TV director. However, I don't believe for a minute that this slighter offering sealed the fate of any further adaptations - ultimately I can only presume the ascent Wilkinson's career enjoyed round about the mid '90s with The Full Monty ultimately taking him to Hollywood was the real reason Resnick was so short-lived.

DI Charlie Resnick has been on my mind this week because I'm reading another novel and am tempted to revisit these adaptations this evening. In looking over my review (which originally appeared on Letterboxd) I came across John Harvey's blog and saw that the great man himself actually referenced my review here - to have a celebrated author you personally respect single out your writing and describe it as 'really interesting' has made my day!