Review of 44 Inch Chest (2009) by Rayfield W — 11 May 2011

This is dark comedy in the truest British sense. I love Guy Ritchie, and this Malcolm Venville joint is just as exuberant, fresh, and sharp witted as Ritchie's mise-en-scene, plotting, and authentic Cockney/South London dialogue.

The story is one of Colin, a brutal, vicious man who is too self absorbed and too insensitive to realize his wife no longer loves him until she shatters his feelings, life, and ego by leaving him for a French waiter listed in the credits only as "Loverboy" (the cliche works, because that's just how clueless Colin is--his wife leaves him for a cliche).

Colin and his fellow modern day barbarian Sons Of Boudicca kidnap the waiter and lightly torture him, planning to eventually murder him in unspeakable ways, but in the process, Colin goes through a sea change, growing a soul out of the rough, ashen, salty soil of his own brutality (we know how brutal he can be by his abusing his wife when she breaks the news to him).

No more spoilers than that; I'll only say the laughter that punctuates the horror (the banter between The Sons is funny as hell and in a way almost warm and touching for the deep ties of friendship that show between these characters) turns to stunned silence by the time the film presents an ending that is as moving as it is unexpected.

Only a big, brusque 44 inch chested actor like Ray Winstone (he plays essentially the same complex, blunt but vulnerable character in "Sexy Beast") could have pulled off the challenge of this role.