Rating: 6.5/10

Writer: Louis Mellis & David Scinto
Director: Malcolm Venville
Cast: John Hurt, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Legeno, Joanne Whalley
Studio: Image Entertainment

Much of the marketing for 44 INCH CHEST misses the mark. The trailer would lead you to believe that you’re in for a rock ‘em, sock ‘em testosterone fest with a Guy Ritchie-esque punch square in the kisser. But 44 INCH CHEST is much closer to a stage play put to screen, a meditation on masculinity and its effect on the modern male psyche.

The cast is easily the biggest selling point of 44 INCH CHEST. Packed with some of the best male leads Britain has to offer, including Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Ian McShane, and Tom Wilkinson. It’s a damn shame no one thought to make character posters of this crew, but c’est la vie.

The premise of 44 INCH CHEST is simple. Winstone’s Colin is left by his wife, Liz (Joanne Whalley), for a younger man. Colin hatches a plan to gather his friends, kidnap Loverboy (we never learn his real name), and kill him. In Colin’s mind, what he is doing is right. It’s the only right thing to be done in the entire situation. His cuckolding at the hands of his wife and Loverboy is so complete, so utterly detrimental to his entire being, that at some point, he ceases to even be Colin anymore. He’s a shell of Colin, another creature that exists simply to exact revenge.

We’re never given any background as to how this motley crew came together. Colin seems like a normal family man, and it’s hard not to wonder just how his closest group of friends includes Hurt’s Old Man Peanut (who takes crotchety, “get off my lawn!”-style antics to an entirely new level), smooth operator Mal (Stephen Dillane), fabulous man-about-town Meredith (McShane), and practical shut-in Archie (Wilkinson). But, in any case, they all turn out for a good old fashioned kidnapping and booze binge.

But beyond the half-cooked “plan” and an excess of talent, there’s little “execution.” So much of the film feels as if it’s been lifted from the theater. The bulk of the action takes place in one room of the decrepit apartment the men bring Loverboy back to. We’re given few flashbacks that reveal more about Colin’s immediate reaction to Liz’s announcement and a couple of out-of-context memories and fantasy sequences. But the majority of what we hear, see, and learn exists between the men in one specific place. 44 INCH CHEST is not based on a play, but it feels exactly as if it was.

Colin’s already fragile psyche crumbles still further when he is left alone with Loverboy. And that’s when we get a bit of a head-trip gun-jump, and it instantly becomes reasonable to wonder just how much of the action is taking place in Colin’s mind. It’s even reasonable to wonder just how many of the actual characters in the film exist, even in part, within Colin’s head. Once the “fantasy” walls of 44 INCH CHEST get torn down (and in a complete and complex way), it’s fair game to begin to question everything. It’s nearly necessitated by the fantasies. Winstone has to ultimately give himself over, not to how his Colin appears to us, but how Colin appears to himself, and that’s when so many lines become fuzzy.

The film is not nearly as violent as the plot would seem to imply, and when violence is on screen, it’s not treated in a gratuitous manner. Even the excessive swearing within 44 INCH CHEST loses its shock value and ceases to be a distraction after awhile.

But despite nothing but fine acting, the overwhelming talkiness of the film slowly sinks it. There are moments of brilliance – a scene involving McShane’s retelling of a night out on the town is pure joy to watch, but nothing else in the film matches it. There are heady ideas about love, marriage, sacrifice, masculinity, femininity, and misogyny at play in 44 INCH CHEST, but the film never strikes a balance between the action it presents and message it wants to present. Instead, we have glimpses and moments of something powerful, but it all comes off half-cocked, a plan without execution, a rage without a name, a hand without a loaded gun.