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INTERMISSION
7/10
Ireland
(Ire/UK) 2003 : John CROWLEY : 103 mins
The enigmatically-titled
interMission arrives on the UK’s multiplex screens only days before
another Colin Farrell movie, SWAT,
barrels noisily into town. Of course, interMission isn’t really
a “Colin Farrell movie” as such : although top-billed, he’s just one among
a crowd of faces in a low-budget but ambitious Irish comedy-drama. In
SWAT, conversely, Farrell is second-billed behind Samuel
L Jackson, but is in fact the lead – the latest step in his startlingly
fast rise to super-stardom.
Working ‘back
home’ for the first time since abortive Kevin Spacey vehicle Ordinary
Decent Criminal, Ballykissangel graduate Farrell has an absolute ball
as a thoroughly unredeemable, hard-as-nails criminal lowlife named Lahiff.
He even gets to belt/snarl out The Clash’s “I Fought the Law” - in character
and surprisingly well - over the closing credits, something he probably
won’t be able to do on his forthcoming Alexander the Great biopic for
Oliver Stone.
interMission
is clearly a ‘breather’ – indeed an ‘intermission’ - for Farrell,
but it isn’t quite the rough-arsed “little fillum” its publicists might
have you believe. There are plenty of well-known names involved both behind
the camera (one of the producers is Neil Jordan) and in front: Star
Trek refugee Colm Meaney is Lahiff’s nemesis Lynch, a Popeye Doyle-style
tough cop with an amusing fondness for mystical Celtic music and an insatiable
appetite for publicity; Cillian Murphy (28
Days Later and Girl
with a Pearl Earring) is John, who can’t get over the breakup
of his relationship with girlfriend Deidre (Kelly Macdonald). Scottish
actress Macdonald (from Trainspotting) does a fair Irish accent
as Deidre, as does the suddenly-ubiquitous Shirley Henderson (Wilbur)
as Deirdre’s frumpy sister Sally.
In a uniformly
strong ensemble, they’re matched by less familiar faces like David Wilmot
as John’s unlucky-in-love best mate Oscar; Tom O’Sullivan as Ben, a pretentious
TV producer who hopes to convince his bosses that the swaggering Lynch
is a suitable for small-screen attention; and Deidre O’Kane as Noeleen,
a fortyish but sexually voracious housewife devastated when her bank-manager
husband Sam (Michael McElhatton) walks out on her and shacks up with Deidre.
But the real
credit should go to director Crowley and writer Mark O’Rowe. Crowley’s
camerawork is a little zoom-happy at times (a la Catherine Hardwicke’s
thirteen), but, perhaps
steadied by Polish cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski, his visuals end
up kinetic without crossing the line to gimmickily in-your-face-ness.
The film’s grainy look is entirely in keeping with O’Rowe’s earthy script,
which for a long while brings the characters together in ways that feel
less contrived than is usually the case in the increasingly popular ‘urban-intersections’
subgenre. The second half is a little more uneven, however – the situations
are perhaps a little over-familiar from both big screen and large; some
of the more violent developments later on smack a little of movie-makers’
contrivance, and the way nearly everyone is paired off with a partner
is a little too neat. These are minor quibbles, however: interMission
is an entertainingly rough-edged, lively little picture with a character
very much of its own – although Crowley and O’Rawe clearly aren’t bothered
about concealing their debts to other movies.
The presence
of Macdonald in the cast would seem to indicate that the opening sequence’s
echoes of Trainspotting (shaven-headed Lahiff is chased through
a busy shopping centre by police) is a deliberate tribute. But the shadow
of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia
hangs much too heavily over too many sequences to be excused as homage
– when the delusional Meaney imagines himself the hero of a documentary
cop-show, it’s too close to John C Reilly’s unhappy cop from Anderson’s
movie. And, as in Magnolia, Crowley punctuates his dialogue-heavy
film with more contemplative passages where John Murphy’s score accompanies
wordless montages of the various characters in extremis.
If you’re going
to steal, of course, you might as well steal from the best. But Crowley
and Rowe shouldn’t need to steal at all – they’re capable of original,
striking stuff of their own, as in their witty, satisfying and (quite
literally) shattering final shot.
5th
December, 2003
(seen 2nd December : UGC Boldon Colliery)
by Neil
Young
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