At this year's Edinburgh Festival, this movie truly made my week. Having for days been dragged through venues awash with self-conscious student theatre, the unpretentious grit of this film put me back on track.
No navel-gazing drama here, but a wonderfully darkly lit wide-screen world, filled with recalcitrant doormen (Paul Barber and James McMartin), a deluded wanna-be cowboy bar owner (Tom Bell), a cuddly crackhead (Andrew Scofield), and an array of Scouser cameos, delivering some of the off-hand comedy that flickers up here and there.
No message-laden, finger-wagging narrative either instead we're dealt a strangely suspended, grimy, but somehow life-affirming status quo. One or two of the film's fight scenes might just be the other side of violent for some but these punches look real and like they might actually hurt rather than the usual slickly choreographed superhero stuff. Do not try this at home.
Do, on the other hand, go and see this movie it feels real too.
No navel-gazing drama here, but a wonderfully darkly lit wide-screen world, filled with recalcitrant doormen (Paul Barber and James McMartin), a deluded wanna-be cowboy bar owner (Tom Bell), a cuddly crackhead (Andrew Scofield), and an array of Scouser cameos, delivering some of the off-hand comedy that flickers up here and there.
No message-laden, finger-wagging narrative either instead we're dealt a strangely suspended, grimy, but somehow life-affirming status quo. One or two of the film's fight scenes might just be the other side of violent for some but these punches look real and like they might actually hurt rather than the usual slickly choreographed superhero stuff. Do not try this at home.
Do, on the other hand, go and see this movie it feels real too.