The Diamonds Aren't Forever 3 Out of 5 Stars
Colin Diamond is having a crappy day. His wife of 21 years has left him for a hunky young French waiter. He beat his wife up over this, drank himself into a stupor, destroyed his house, and now he and his friends are holed up in an abandoned building with "loverboy" tied up in a cabinet. One should always beware of sleeping with Papa Bear's honey; he may be a murderous gangster.
This is the premise of "44 Inch Chest
," a modest if stagy British film that features a few of my favorite actors. Ray Winstone is Colin, who is hurt, confused, vengeful and unsure of what he should do now that his life is destroyed. John Hurt plays Old Man Peanut, a greasy, profane thug who would be happy to slowly torture Loverboy to death, because that is what real men did back in the day. And then there's Ian McShane, the super cool gay gambler who seems to be the most rational (and therefore, the most deadly) of this band. He's happy to flaunt his sexuality, but not flamboyantly. It's more like a taunt; give him and his "9 and a half" any guff, he'll kill your puny butt and leave no witnesses. Tom Wilkerson and Stephen Dillane round out the crew, and they all spend most of this movie cajoling Colin into manning up and getting rid of the punk that stole his woman. Other than the set-up and some effective flashbacks/dream sequences, the story plays out in the room where the gang has their hostage. Gangsters or no, this is no action movie. There's a lot of talk about the sanctity of marriage, what it means to be a man, what love means, and about the movie "Samson and Delilah." Frankly, without McShane, "44 Inch Chest" would not be all that compelling. It's time he got a lead of his own.
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