Back Catalogue: Reviews 7

Starring William H. Macy, Patricia Clarkson, Luis Guzman, Jennifer Esposito, George Clooney, Sam Rockwell, Isiah Washington and Michael Jeter.
Directed and written by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo.
Produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh.
Running time: 86 min.

Filled with a crazy but affectionate sensibility and some delightfully comic turns, Welcome to Collinwood is really the flipside of last year's glossy Ocean's Eleven. That film was produced by Ocean's director Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney (who has a cameo here), but this is an idiosyncratic group-caper flick of a very different order.

Outwith Clooney, the biggest star on board is William H. Macy. Instead of the neon and dancing fountains of Vegas, the setting is among the drifters and low-lifes in an east Cleveland slum, in some shabby indeterminate postwar period.

Based on a 1958 Italian hit comedy by Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Welcome to Collinwood was written and directed by Cleveland brothers Anthony and Joe Russo. The brothers spin out their story like a Damon Runyan or O. Henry fable, punching up the flavourful scenery and odd characters, but avoiding the usual post-Tarantino brutal edge.

Anchored in the comic skills of its veteran non-star ensemble, set against Mark Mothersbaugh's (remember Devo?) bright acoustic guitar-based score, the story goes through a series of sharp narrative twists. Eventually it returns the audience to the opening scene: a bunch of sorry-looking men standing on a city pavement early in the morning, one with a broken arm, one in a woman's nightgown, all looking charred and bloody.

The extended narrative flashback takes us back to a simple car theft, late at night. The clumsy thief, Cosimo (Luis Guzman), manages to get himself tied up in the car he is trying to steal, and is hauled off to jail. In the pen, he meets an eccentric old bricklayer, who tells him of a "bellini" -- meaning, a score so large a thief can retire rich. A fortune is waiting in a pawnshop safe in an apartment building, through a fake wall. The older inmate, who murdered his wife before he could collect the loot, is in for life.

Guzman puts out word through his moll (Patricia Clarkson). He'll put up $15,000 to pay a "mullinski" (someone to take the rap) so he can get out of jail and score the bellini.

As the supposedly top-secret search goes out for a suitable fall guy, an ever-growing assortment of characters in the Cleveland slum of Collinwood hear about the opportunity. These include Macy, a doleful bankrupt photographer who can't find the $1,000 to spring his baby's mother from jail. Macy, who wears mutton-chop sideburns framing a face that looks like it wears the imprint of the last foot that stepped on it, spends the film with a gurgling infant attached to his chest.

Rounding out the crew of misfits is the epicene geezer Toto (Michael Jeter, of The Fisher King fame); the slickly dressed Leon (Isaiah Washington), who menaces people with a penknife attached to his keychain; and Basil (Andrew Davoli) a scruffy geezer with a crush on Leon's sister.

Finally, a suitable "mullinsky" is found: a cocky boxer with a glass jaw named Pero (Sam Rockwell), who doesn't have a criminal record and can take the risk of a jail sentence. Things don't go quite according to plan, and soon Pero, not the outraged Cosimo, is back on the street, ready to lead the gang. First though, he has to gain access to the apartment by courting the pretty housemaid Carmela (Jennifer Esposito), who has moved in to the previously abandoned apartment with two old ladies. Carmela is more than willing to date Pero, but he has to join the queue: she has many boyfriends because "it's easier that way."

One more hurdle is to get $500 for a consultant named Jerzy (Clooney, in a wheelchair), who takes his fee to teach the two basic methods of safecracking: blow it up with dynamite for instant (and messy) results, or spend three hours drilling a hole in the side.

Not each of the character's subplots is worth attention, but the elements converge neatly, and the silent-comedy, pants-down slapstick of the robbery sequence is deftly funny. Clocking in at a brisk 86 minutes, the film also knows when to chuck it. By the time Macy utters the memorable words, "I hate to say it, but this bellini is starting to look like a real kaputschnik," the movie still feels like a winner. More of a carnival gift than a lottery win, perhaps, but it's still a prize.

Directed by Peter Howitt
Written by William Davis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
Starring Rowan Atkinson, John Malkovich, Natalie Imbruglia and Ben Miller

Apparently inspired by the Barclaycard adverts, Johnny English is a totally predictable, appallingly stereotypical, atrociously inept shambles of a film about, guess what(?) another bumbling idiotic cretin-cum-spy. Rowan Atkinson is Johnny English, a private detective drafted in by MI7 head Pegasus (Tim Piggot Smith) to find out what happened to one of their agents. It transpires that this agent was caught trying to thwart a plan to steal the crown jewels. Ho-hum.

Whilst English and fellow agent Bough (Miller) do their snooping on French multimillionaire Pascal Suavage (a hideously dreadful performance by John Malkovich - whom you'd think would know better - he even hits us with the dramatic school of arts crappy French accent "zees ess/how you say" etc. I was hoping near the end that we'd discover he wasn't really French and that it was a ploy to deceive his enemies, but no such luck. Obviously there are people out there who buy this execrable bilge!)

Johnny English is billed as a British comedy: full of slapdash insanity you could write with a hangover and two broken hands, this nadir of drivel tirelessly retreads some extremely familiar comedy routines, in a role Rowan Atkinson was born to play - the man is so limited he should be a registered company. The gadgets and methods are tiresome in the extreme: he can't fire a gun properly and when he finally gets to use it, bits of it fall off. He even has the gall to regurgitate the physical posture elements and remarks of Basil Fawlty (Towers) and misappropriates lines from his Blackadder character and the rubber-faced banality of the loathsome "Bean" character he tortured millions with over the last decade.

Don't fall for the marketing, nor Atkinson's 'sincere' TV plugging on shows like "Parkinson". All prints of this should immediately be thrown into a furnace.