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MEAN
MACHINE
6/10
UK
2001
director
: Barry Skolnick
script : Charlie Fletcher, Chris Baker, Andy Day
(based on film The Longest Yard from a story by Al Ruddy)
producers include : Matthew Vaughn, Guy Ritchie
lead actors : Vinnie Jones, David Hemmings, Jason Statham, Vas Blackwood
technical personnel – to follow
approx 95 minutes
If
that Harry Potter’s supposed to be so magical, how come his team Motherwell
are doing so crap in the SPL? OK, the scene where Potter and his wizardy
pals ‘kick off’ on the Fir Park terraces must have been removed by the
squeamish censors, and, if we’re being nitpicky about it, the Steelmen
are never mentioned by name in Harry
Potter and the Philosophy of Steve Stone. But there’s no mistaking
those amber-n-claret scarves – Edinburgh lass J K Rowling is supposed
to such be a stickler for detail, and the ‘Quidditch’ game, in which goals
can only be scored by supernatural means, is clearly a dig at manager
Alex Dick’s current problems up-front...
But
while Harry’s bizarre allegiance clearly hasn’t harmed his box-office
performance, the young wand-botherer will have his work cut out fending
off his most fearsome opponent: not Voldemort, not Lord of the Rings,
but... Vinnie Jones, leading man! Yes, after Lock Stock, Snatch,
Gone in 60 Seconds and
Swordfish, Jones must
be fed up of playing second banana behind Cage, Pitt and Travolta - or
should that be ‘tenth banana with hardly any lines’? Mean Machine,
co-produced by his old ‘china’ Guy Ritchie, provides him with his first
starring role as Danny ‘Mean Machine’ Meehan, a washed-up ex-footballer
with violent tendencies. Not exactly a stretch for the ‘hardman’ thesp...
but a stretch is exactly what Vinny – sorry, Danny – gets after
a drunkenly assaulting a cop. He’s sentenced to three years’ porridge
in a jail where the Governor (Hemmings) just happens to be desperate for
his guards’ team to win their local league...
ALS
caught a special sneak-preview of the picture when it was shown to
specially selected VIPs in Soho last month. The ropey early scenes lazily
tick off every prison-movie cliche in the book: the posh, sarky governor,
the nasty ‘screws,’ the meal-time riot, the sympathetic-but-doomed inmate...
But this really is, thankfully, a film of two halves: when
a ‘friendly’ match between Cons and Guards is set up by the conniving
governor, Mean Machine suddenly switches gear and becomes a raucously
enjoyable crazy-comic version of Escape To Victory.
There’s
a ‘serious’ sub-plot about how Danny needs to regain his self-respect
– he was sacked from the England captaincy (dream on, Vincent) when it
emerged that he’d thrown a vital match – but director Barry Skolnick wisely
concentrates on milking maximum thick-ear laughs out of the training and
the game itself, in which inmate goalie ‘The Monk’ (Lock/Snatch veteran
Statham) come into his own like an unholy mix of Hannibal Lecter and Fabien
Barthez. Choppy editing prevents us from seeing whether any of these actors
can actually play footy, but it’s nicely synchronised to music
that includes liberal helpings of our very own ‘Dance of the Knights’
by Prokofiev.
While
Vinnie needn’t bother rehearsing his Oscar acceptance speech (“Thank you
academy, it’s been emotional...”) quite yet, it’s hard to imagine any
proper ‘name’ actor being quite so convincing as the no-nonsense Danny.
He even gets away with a shameless Steve McQueen ‘tribute’ when he’s banged
up in solitary and starts bouncing a tennis ball off the walls. With its
menacing ‘Get ready for injury time’ poster, Mean Machine is clearly
never going to appeal to the Merchant Ivory set, nor anyone with fond
memories of the Burt Reynolds original from 1974. But the target audience
will lap it up, preferably after the pub with the accompaniment of a chicken
kebab. Add the on-pitch action to a bloodspattered boxing sequence and
a hilariously gratuitous sex scene, and you have perfect Christmas fayre
– at least for lads who rejected the three Rs in favour of the three Fs.
26th November,
2001
(seen
Nov-2-01, Mr Young’s Screening Room, London – unfinished print)
by Neil
Young
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