On the way into the screening for 44 INCH CHEST (I know the title should have a hyphen in it, but it doesn’t, and I’m a full believer in reproducing titles as shown), a colleague was heard to ask, “How come a movie called 44 INCH CHEST only has one woman in the cast?” Like him, you need to be disillusioned quickly: this is not a documentary about LA billboard model Angelyne, nor a Russ Meyer tribute. No, the chest in question features the sweaty, hairy man-boobs of Ray Winstone. Shaggy, bearded, and pacing like a caged animal, the SEXY BEAST star looks like a missing cast member from Spike Jonze’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, and has the same kinds of mood-swings. His wife just left him, though, so it’s somewhat understandable.
Former commercial director Malcolm Venville starts strongly: close-ups on some bits of broken glass. Torn cushions. A family pet in hiding. Hary Nilsson’s “Without You” on the soundtrack. Then we gradually round a corner, and see a man lying on the ground. It is, of course, Winstone, who occasionally blinks his eyes in tune with the music.
Winstone’s Colin Diamond has trashed his house after his wife of many years, Liz (Joanne Whalley) walked out. Seeing as how this movie is from the writers of SEXY BEAST and GANGSTER NO. 1, we can presume that Colin will not spend the entirety of the movie taking this lying down. Indeed, he swiftly summons a quartet of English actors with whom one would not wish to play around – Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, and Stephen Dillane – and they swiftly snatch up Liz’s apparent new man, a French waiter (Melvil Poupaud), as Wilkinson’s Archie threateningly wields a pepper-mill and admonishes the diners to “concentrate on your snails.” The rest of the movie takes place in a run-down room that has holes in the wall while retaining a working electricity supply, as the five fellas figure out just what to do with their quarry, addressed only as “Loverboy.” Everyone agrees that it has to be Colin’s decision, but Colin is an emotional wreck, and not thinking clearly.
