Homegrown Brit to compete with Clooney, Bullock
This week’s homegrown release is director Malcolm Venville’s taut gangster drama 44 Inch Chest [+see also:
trailer
film profile] from distributor Momentum Pictures, which won favourable notices at the London Film Festival last year. The film boasts a veritable galaxy of British tough guys, including Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Ian McShane, Stephen Dillane and French actor Melvil Poupaud, who star alongside Joanne Whalley.
The cast mouths a series of dazzling one-liners by scribes Louis Mellis and David Scinto, the duo responsible for penning the much-lauded Sexy Beast, also starring Winstone. The film is a paean to London, shot as it is in gritty locations across the teeming metropolis, thanks to locations manager David Broder, who worked in association with Film London.
Broder said, “Malcolm Venville the director likes to set atmosphere with static frames and I searched for areas and glimpses of London that had the brooding atmosphere that we were after. The key exterior is the gang’s base and that was found in Bow near the Blackwall Tunnel. We also set scenes in Petticoat Lane, Southwark and Bermondsey. Areas of Knightsbridge and the West End were also used as a contrast – a casino at 50 St James; Papillon, an atmospheric French restaurant in Brompton Cross; and the Nash terraces in Regent's Park.”
Venville said, “For me the biggest challenge was giving the film the right look and feel. I didn’t want just a series of photographs, showing people talking… I wanted to make it look more complex than just a kitchen sink drama.”
The film will be pitted against Up in the Air, starring George Clooney; All About Steve, starring Sandra Bullock; and smash French sequel OSS 117: Lost In Rio [+see also:
trailer
film profile].
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