44 Inch Chest: Critic Reviews

Think of 44 Inch Chest as a piece of chamber music and you can compensate for the thinness of its story and the lack of visual distinction.

It talks the talk - in fact, it talks and talks and talks the talk. But the walk isn't happening.

It's sometimes difficult to discern whether the filmmakers are dissecting male bonding, ritualized aggression and sexual anxiety or celebrating it.

Is this a documentary about a porn professional? Or a gym rat? Neither. It's a stagy, half-entertaining, half-tedious acting competition between five excellent Englishmen.

The effect is to clobber you with lines that were already clobbersome and needed no extra emphasis. It starts to feel less like a thriller than an actors' workshop.

A very strange, often terrible affair that is nevertheless mesmerizing, in a limited way.

The whole thing feels like middle-period Mamet with English accents, and not much to say.

After a while you can see why the wayward wife moved on to fresher prospects. Our man Ray is all talk, no bloody action.

If you value your I.Q., avoid a horror called 44 Inch Chest like V.D.

Could easily elicit accusations of misogyny -- especially given its percussive, unrelenting but eminently realistic use of the C-word -- but it's actually, at its best, an acute, unblinking portrait of misogyny in practice, not a misogynistic text itself.

Even a great British cast and obscenity-laden gangland dialogue aren't enough to make what amounts to an extended acting exercise into much of a movie.

All moody buildup and no -- I mean no -- real suspense.

There's a difference between exposing misogyny and crassly exploiting it.

Malcolm Venville, in an assured directorial debut, builds suspense with steady effectiveness.

...an uneven yet engrossing drama that benefits substantially from the efforts of its unusually impressive roster of performers.

I can't help thinking it's a waste of talent.

It boasts a crackerjack cast and a richly dense script, and scenes of inspired fantasy and hallucinatory nightmarish power.

As an exercise in gender de-construction it's a crude bit of irony.

A verbose exercise in profanity that wastes the talent of a bunch of fine actors who sit around and discuss how best to restore the bruised ego of one of their hardened gang.

This talky crime drama is a searing examination of masculinity and misogyny that is littered with rampant profanity and lashings of humour.

The title suggests an exploration of the macho notion of masculinity, and while the theme filters through, it is less than satisfying; the film also lacks layers, making it a one-note movie with the odd flash of wit

Filled with actorly weight, this top-heavy film needs a back brace

A smashingly acted but dramatically thin expose of men behaving badly that isn't nearly as revelatory as it seems to think it is.

Writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto seem to have been hoping for something along the lines of those Quentin Tarantino scenes where thugs kvetch about pop music and cinnamon buns, but the 44 Inch dialogue is not as clever as Tarantino's...