{"id":4984,"date":"2010-02-05T20:52:40","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T00:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2010-02-06T09:59:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T13:59:40","slug":"44-inch-chest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4984","title":{"rendered":"44 Inch Chest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Macho posturing doesn\u2019t always have to be a cover for homoerotic tension. Sometimes, such as with a movie like H<\/span>umpday<\/span><\/a><\/em>, the homoerotic tension is created<\/em> by the macho posturing. In that film, two friends drunkenly dare each other to make a gay porn together, and the next day, neither will back off for fear of looking \u201cweak\u201d (read: gay). They convince themselves to do something they don\u2019t want to do because of their approximation of what hardened straight men are supposed to be, someone who can make a decision and stick to it, no matter how much it would be in their best interest to have second thoughts.<\/p>\n

Such a dilemma is central to Malcolm Venville\u2019s 44 Inch Chest<\/em>, where Ray Winstone (as Colin) has to decide whether or not he wants to kill the man in front of him. A man who repeatedly slept with Colin\u2019s wife, breaking up their 21 year marriage. The confusion for Colin is created because his friends have kidnapped the man, a young, good-looking waiter at a French restaurant, brought him to an abandoned house in an isolated area and are egging Colin on to kill him, as it would be the right thing to do. His friends range in age and temperament, but they\u2019re all too old to be active gangsters (or as Chris Rock might put it \u201ctoo old for the club\u201d), and killing the waiter is, of course, something they certainly couldn\u2019t do on their own, no matter what they tell themselves.<\/p>\n

\"\"As if to really hammer home this point, writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto (who wrote the black comedy Sexy Beast<\/em>, also about manly bluster that spills over into violence and\/or gay sex) has Colin\u2019s friends be comprised of people like Tom Wilkinson, who is in his 60s and still lives with and dotes on his mother, John Hurt, wrinkled, nasty, judgmental, and feeble, and Ian McShane as a gay playboy named Meredith, who has a calming demeanor and revels in having no emotional attachments. Colin has defined himself by his marriage, and his one-note character would seem to be Mellis and Scinto\u2019s fault, but they\u2019ve basically written a grown-up version of W<\/span>here the Wild Things Are<\/span><\/a><\/em>, where each character is really representative of a side to Colin, and one that hasn\u2019t surfaced in a long time (alienating his wife, played by the ex-Mrs.V<\/span>al Kilmer<\/span><\/a>, Joanne Whalley), and are all trying to examine his inner rage.<\/p>\n

\"\"Limited to mostly a single, barren set, 44 Inch Chest<\/em> is closest to a surrealist stage play that resembles the writing of David Mamet and David Rabe in tone (and at points, Neil LaBute), all of whom specialize in the seething hostility of the common, shallow man. Mellis and Scinto bring some elements of Sexy Beast<\/em> with them, such as the self-aware flashbacks where characters, looking at the camera, mouth the words of their own narration, and fantasy scenes that cause characters to lose sense of their reality, and are often creepy and disorienting for us. McShane and Winstone were two of the leads in Sexy Beast <\/em>as well (with McShane playing another calculating, gay character and Winstone as a settled family man with a wife that\u2019s too good looking for him, and he knows it), and once again there\u2019s a character named Mal, but the Sexy Beast<\/em> comparison is mostly superficial and a misdirection. Venville\u2019s film doesn\u2019t have the show-off style of Sexy Beast<\/em>, nor the quick pacing, in-your-face performances, or the blindingly sunny color scheme. Venville keeps the camera back and the images wet, brown, and moldy while the characters scowl and spew vitriol at the waiter (and frequently tarnishing Whalley\u2019s image with graphic sexual invective), allowing us to see how they have nothing behind them. All their empty hostility makes the occasional un-ironically delivered line like \u201cwhat a boo-boo,\u201d that much funnier.<\/p>\n

\"\"That\u2019s not to suggest that 44 Inch Chest<\/em> is anywhere near the black comedy that Sexy Beast<\/em> was, Venville\u2019s inexperience (it\u2019s his first feature) behind the camera pops up from time to time, especially in the slack first \u00bd hour, that takes far too long to set up the simple premise and half-hearted staging that makes the characters look like they\u2019re at an AA meeting, not people who\u2019ve known each other for quite a long time. But the swirling momentum of the third act, as Colin may be losing his mind, does a lot to help you forget about the film\u2019s previous aimlessness. Winstone\u2019s performance is intentionally sputtery, and a lot of 44 Inch Chest<\/em> is carried by McShane\u2019s suavity, but just like the messiness worked in favor of Spike Jonze\u2019s Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>, the lack of control in 44 Inch Chest<\/em> gives us a much better idea of Colin\u2019s mindset.\u00a0 Maybe he’ll admit to making a boo-boo.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Macho posturing doesn\u2019t always have to be a cover for homoerotic tension. Sometimes, such as with a movie like Humpday, the homoerotic tension is created by the macho posturing. In that film, two friends drunkenly dare each other to make a gay porn together, and the next day, neither will back off for fear of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5188,6183,790,5928,6184,5960,6191,144,4961,6185,6188,6189,3050,2986,127,277,3067,667,639,4871,4946,3844,3046,6192,385,3718,6186,4870,5001,6190,4878,6181,6187,4600,2965,310,6153,5189,3719,462,4310,4654,286,2466,146,2480,6182],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}