44 Inch Chest

What enriches the recipe is that no one is quite as cagey as they seem. Colin is officially thuggish, but he's a blinkered romantic. Archie is a mama's boy, Meredith is gay, Mal is impotent, and Peanut wears dentures.

The best reason to see 44 Inch Chest is simply to behold some of the finest actors working today, especially Winstone -- who can embody winsomeness and menace in one sweaty, unkempt glance -- and the woefully underemployed Dillane.

It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie.

It starts to feel less like a thriller than an actors’ workshop.

Structurally, 44 Inch Chest resembles "Reservoir Dogs"; but, without the added amusement of Tarantino's skewing of narrative time, it feels very much more like a direct adaptation of a stage play (which apparently it's not). The filmmakers do goose things up by playing with reality in the second half, but it all leads to a payoff that, while perfectly legitimate, feels limp.

The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness.

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