Totally barmy in EVERY sense of the word. ‘G.B.H’ (as described by the people I watched it with tonight) feels like ‘Roadhouse’ meets ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells’ though, this predates both of them.
A quirky picture following the misadventures of a recently released from prison ‘fixer’ who’s put in charge of running security at a string of Mancunian pubs and clubs. The film works more as a series of ‘Scenarios’ stitched together rather than a coherent work. But I feel this works SO much better in the films favour than a traditional narrative. we basically just see our lead character engage with thugs and mobsters from rival factions, give them a good kicking, and this is intercut with him seducing anything with a pulse that walks through the doors, and in a particularly notorious scene, he appears to have sex with a stuffed teddy bear…I have no idea why that happens.
The script is SUPER lightweight, clocks in at approx 73 minutes, the tone is supposed to be heavy and gritty, but comes off as ramshackled and campy. the pacing is non existent, this is ADHD addled cinema at its finest, and as an ADHD riddled individual I was utterly won over by its total lack of coherency or an attempt at a vision.
The characters are all cockney gangster stereotypes, the ending is bizarre, the film continuously jumps all over the place trying to find a thread which it never really manages. the opening act is pretty coherent in setting up the base scneario. but it gets SO lost in the 2nd act as to what its actually trying to say or do. That when it bizarrely finally PICKS a lane in the last 10 minutes…I had all but given up on trying to follow the thing, and was purely costing on its enjoyable ‘Vibes’ for lack of a better descriptive.
The dialogue was clearly written to sound ‘Hard’ but is delivered softer than pudding. resulting in some WONDERFUL deliveries that made me laugh multiple times.
The directions poor due to the lack of coherency on the script, I believe this is quite possibly the 2nd dullest car chase i’ve ever seen ina movie. the cine is incoherent with shots barely composed, beige colour palettes and no real tolerance for ‘The Line’ or cinematic planning.
The edit is ROUGH, with cuts happening 2 seconds to early across the entire runtime and an epileptic level of cuts happening during the fight sequences making it almost impossible to figure out whats actually going on. they also use Slow motion capture…but not on the scenes slow motions really inteded for…its a weirdly put together movie, I could fully believe the editor was paid in watered down whisky.
The performances range from genuinely fun and menacing villains to people who clearly have never acted or read a script in their lives. and the soundtrack sounds like stock music throughout…presumably because Director and producer Cliff Tremlow was a music library scorer as his full time job.
Despite its total TOTAL incoherency. I really quite enjoyed ‘GBH’, its ramshackled ‘Thrown together’ nature makes it perfect ‘Booze and friends’ viewing fodder and its unintentionally hilarious assembly had me grinning multiple times throughout. im really looking forward to Severins upcoming release of this, and it’ll very likely be a day one pre-order! be sure to check this one out when it gets released!
TYTD Reviews 