Photo Source: Jack English
Clearly actor turned writer-director Paddy Considine ("In America") was trying to re-create the look and feel of those black-and-white "angry young man" English dramas so prevalent in the late 1950s and early '60s, movies such as "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." It's an admirable attempt, and many critics since the film's 2011 Sundance Film Festival debut have applauded it. It was recently nominated for several British Independent Film Awards. But any film that opens with the gut-wrenching beating of a beloved pet dog and closes with another unspeakable scene in the same vein is not going to get our vote for feel-good movie of the year. In between, we are treated to female abuse on a scale rarely seen in films these days. One scene is so degrading, you simply have to turn away.
The basic story focuses on two lonely, highly damaged people who come together through circumstance. Joseph (Peter Mullan) is the last angry man, a hot-button, unemployed widower who spends his nights drinking but cannot control his violent temper. He is the type of guy who never went to college and probably spent his youth with the bad boys who cause trouble and have nothing to live for but carousing and watching football matches. Into his life comes Hannah (Olivia Colman), a seemingly stable and well-mannered Christian worker at a charity shop into which he stumbles. She turns out to be a calming influence, taming the monster inside him but holding deep dark secrets of her own—mainly about her dead-end relationship with her abusive husband. In other words, these two broken people come together at the right time, but their relationship is informed with more darkness and tragedy.
Considine proves a promising director, but he has let himself down with the script, which evolved from his debut short film, "Dog Altogether." Considine has said the aim of that film was to begin with a violent man kicking his dog to death and "to try to get an audience to end up caring for him." If that was the idea with this expanded feature, it is mission not accomplished. It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of these poor souls and even harder to work up sympathy.
The actors, however, could not be better. Mullan knows his way around the miserable life of Joseph and plays it in uncompromising style. He's memorable in a movie you might want to try to forget. Colman is also stunning, veering from good soul to tortured wife and back again. Unfortunately, a plot contrivance in the third act involving her character and her husband just does not ring true.
"Tyrannosaur" is ultimately about the fragility of connections to each other and our own basic humanity. Sadly, it should have been more affecting.
Genre: Drama
Written by Paddy Considine
Directed by Paddy Considine
Starring Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan
