SPOILERS. You have been warned. In recent years the gangster genre has taken a sound beating at the hands of all manner of uncivilized thugs. We've suffered through Guy Ritchie's nauseating cockernee vodka-ad rubbish, the endless run of post-Tarantino disasters and the depressing glut of low-budget no-hoper efforts from the British school of blokes in suits shooting each other. We've gone from The Godfather via Reservoir Dogs to Two Days in the Valley and Snatch. But something interesting has been happening elsewhere, and it is slowly infecting the movies with its own potent mythology. Jake Arnott's recent novel, The Long Firm is already seen as a classic of its kind. Full of great British characteristics like deceit, violence, robbery, snobbery and buggery, it didn't reinvent the genre but it did give it a hit of much needed vitality. The Long Firm took for granted the idea that gangsters are in it for more than just the money.
All that hanging around with guys in a big guys-only gang has its appeals to certain members of society. The homosexuality of violent men was suddenly not the subtext, but the text itself. It wasn't long before Arnott's aesthetic was seeping into films, investing Gangster No. 1 with a seedy eroticism that added a new twist to some old ideas about male violence. That film took the British gangster genre to a very interesting place (and it's important that this is a British trend the US gangster is still obsessed with talking cool and shooting straight). But a new film that blasted into our cinemas recently goes further, raising questions not just of sexuality, but of religion, redemption, corruption, morality, and the very meaning of life in a 'civilized' society. That sounds like more weight than any low-budget Brit-flick can bear, and it probably is, but the makers of Mr Inbetween are at least out there, giving it their best shot. Neil Cross's original novel was not exactly brilliant, packed as it was with grammatical errors, pretension and rather tedious action. But it's often the worst books that make the best movies, and so it proves here, for Mr Inbetween is a very fine movie indeed. It offers a world view that is pessimistic yet somehow humane; where violent men are violent because they live in a violent world. It's not much of an excuse for kicking the s**t out of people for a living, and if any of these characters really existed you'd run a mile to avoid them, but in the world of film it makes a certain sense. Part of the appeal of movies is in watching lives that you could never actually live, and would not want to. Violence as an answer to life's problems is a dead-end. You beat someone up, and someone somewhere wants to beat you up. Eventually you spend all your time beating people up or being beaten up by people. Movies offer us a glimpse of a world where the rules are different, and the best movies make that world come thrillingly alive.
Mr Inbetween tells the story of Andrew, a man who kicks the s**t out of people for a living. At the start of the film he's just kicked the s**t out of some geezer. Then he bumps into an old school friend who looks on him, even years later, with awe. The old school friend is down on his luck, paying for a round with a pocket full of pennies, and our hero takes pity on him, and wangles him a job in one of those gangster garages that gangsters always seem to have. In a perfect inversion of the real world, Andrew envies his old friend his life, his wife, his child, his domestic bliss. While we're thrilling to the unruly life of violent crime, the violent man just wants to settle down and watch the telly and dunk his digestive in a mug of sweet tea. But of course this is a crime thriller, and nothing can be that simple. The old friend is overwhelmed by Andrew's generosity, his wife is pretty grateful too, and it's not too long before she's running her fingers over Andrew's copious scar tissue. Meanwhile, Andrew's boss (The Tattooed Man), who appears to live in some bizarre underground hangar last seen in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, is cooking and discussing philosophy. There are people who need to be dealt with. Andrew and his mate, the affable driver who's always putting inappropriate songs on the car stereo ('Sorry! Sorry!') arrive at some kind of mansion/castle/stately home in the middle of the night. The Tattooed Man and his two (male) associates greet Andrew with real delight (one of them kisses him full on the lips). Terrible things happen in an upstairs room. Of course, this is not the last we will see of these sinister associates and this upstairs room. For, in true gangster movie fashion, our hero starts to long for all the things he hasn't got, and we know it's only a matter of time before he will find himself in that upstairs room, facing these three sinister (and frankly quite terrifying) men. It's not over yet, though, not by a long way. The good will suffer, the bad will attempt to redeem themselves, the evil will win. If Mr Inbetween is not entirely unpredictable then the fault probably lies as much with the genre as with the film itself. One last job. Cop about to retire. Bad man trying to go straight. Heist goes wrong. How many things can you do with this stuff? What sets a few films above the dross is not so much what they do as what they do not do. Mr Inbetween does not wallow in violence. It does not give in to cliché or caricature. It does not provide cheap laughs or cheap shocks. It does not make much money at the box office.
All that hanging around with guys in a big guys-only gang has its appeals to certain members of society. The homosexuality of violent men was suddenly not the subtext, but the text itself. It wasn't long before Arnott's aesthetic was seeping into films, investing Gangster No. 1 with a seedy eroticism that added a new twist to some old ideas about male violence. That film took the British gangster genre to a very interesting place (and it's important that this is a British trend the US gangster is still obsessed with talking cool and shooting straight). But a new film that blasted into our cinemas recently goes further, raising questions not just of sexuality, but of religion, redemption, corruption, morality, and the very meaning of life in a 'civilized' society. That sounds like more weight than any low-budget Brit-flick can bear, and it probably is, but the makers of Mr Inbetween are at least out there, giving it their best shot. Neil Cross's original novel was not exactly brilliant, packed as it was with grammatical errors, pretension and rather tedious action. But it's often the worst books that make the best movies, and so it proves here, for Mr Inbetween is a very fine movie indeed. It offers a world view that is pessimistic yet somehow humane; where violent men are violent because they live in a violent world. It's not much of an excuse for kicking the s**t out of people for a living, and if any of these characters really existed you'd run a mile to avoid them, but in the world of film it makes a certain sense. Part of the appeal of movies is in watching lives that you could never actually live, and would not want to. Violence as an answer to life's problems is a dead-end. You beat someone up, and someone somewhere wants to beat you up. Eventually you spend all your time beating people up or being beaten up by people. Movies offer us a glimpse of a world where the rules are different, and the best movies make that world come thrillingly alive.
Mr Inbetween tells the story of Andrew, a man who kicks the s**t out of people for a living. At the start of the film he's just kicked the s**t out of some geezer. Then he bumps into an old school friend who looks on him, even years later, with awe. The old school friend is down on his luck, paying for a round with a pocket full of pennies, and our hero takes pity on him, and wangles him a job in one of those gangster garages that gangsters always seem to have. In a perfect inversion of the real world, Andrew envies his old friend his life, his wife, his child, his domestic bliss. While we're thrilling to the unruly life of violent crime, the violent man just wants to settle down and watch the telly and dunk his digestive in a mug of sweet tea. But of course this is a crime thriller, and nothing can be that simple. The old friend is overwhelmed by Andrew's generosity, his wife is pretty grateful too, and it's not too long before she's running her fingers over Andrew's copious scar tissue. Meanwhile, Andrew's boss (The Tattooed Man), who appears to live in some bizarre underground hangar last seen in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, is cooking and discussing philosophy. There are people who need to be dealt with. Andrew and his mate, the affable driver who's always putting inappropriate songs on the car stereo ('Sorry! Sorry!') arrive at some kind of mansion/castle/stately home in the middle of the night. The Tattooed Man and his two (male) associates greet Andrew with real delight (one of them kisses him full on the lips). Terrible things happen in an upstairs room. Of course, this is not the last we will see of these sinister associates and this upstairs room. For, in true gangster movie fashion, our hero starts to long for all the things he hasn't got, and we know it's only a matter of time before he will find himself in that upstairs room, facing these three sinister (and frankly quite terrifying) men. It's not over yet, though, not by a long way. The good will suffer, the bad will attempt to redeem themselves, the evil will win. If Mr Inbetween is not entirely unpredictable then the fault probably lies as much with the genre as with the film itself. One last job. Cop about to retire. Bad man trying to go straight. Heist goes wrong. How many things can you do with this stuff? What sets a few films above the dross is not so much what they do as what they do not do. Mr Inbetween does not wallow in violence. It does not give in to cliché or caricature. It does not provide cheap laughs or cheap shocks. It does not make much money at the box office.