Fathers of Girls

Fathers Of Girls seems to set its store out along the same street as Liam Neeson‘s Taken or a similar Nicolas Cage style revenge flick, but then goes on to ignore the cliches and stereotypes. Anyone hoping for such carnage on the streets of Salisbury in Wiltshire will be in for a sore disappointment. Frank’s (RAY WINSTONE – 44 INCH CHEST) solicitor is devastated when his daughter (LOIS WINSTONE – BASEMENT) shows up dead after a drug overdose at her student digs. Under the misapprehension that his daughter was an angel goes down to Salisbury to get to the bottom of who sold his daughter the drugs and find out the real story.

Now I lived in Salisbury (I was living there when this was being filmed) and was socially active for nearly three years down there and I am shocked to find out there are organised crime rings down there, so that stuck in the throat a little bit (there probably is though – I’m a pub man though). The film made up for that in a very small way because I gleaned faint enjoyment from I recognising the cafes, libraries, colleges, parks and squares that our hero trudges through in the name of unearthing the truth. Long takes, muddy sound and natural lighting contribute to fatigue brought on by willing Frank into action. For someone conducting an investigation, he’s very slow on the uptake and quite backward at coming forwards. He stumbles upon a very real lead and leaves a second meeting to glean more information down to chance. The big bad is established almost immediately and yet he’s seemingly let off the hook because he has an identical relationship with his own daughter, Emma (CHLOE HOWMAN – HOLBY BLUE). Ray Winstone does put in a thoughtful performance and he alone carries the film on his back. The rest of the project is amateurish, badly scripted and plotted. It’s subject matter is interesting in taking the father’s reaction to his child’s death but there’s no life in the finish. A clunky and redundant voice over by Frank makes the whole exercise hard to identify with and unfortunately, at other times makes it hilarious. Karl Howman (of TVs Brush Strokes fame also Winstone’s brother-in-law) and co-director Ethem Cetintas bring nothing but drudgery to the proceedings. It’s probably been viewed as an acting gift to one of our acting national treasures but sadly its a misguided and considerably duff one. It flunks on every level as a drama, a psych study, an actor’s showcase or a thriller. It’s like a car with no wheels or engines. It just sits there looking hopeless. Some of the takes are inordinately long, there’s one in particular where Ray Winstone makes a cup of tea including boiling the kettle in real time. This is followed or intercut with a scene where Emma empties one of the daughter’s suitcases examining each dress at a time slowly. Even a bizarre visit to a gay palmist (ROGER KITTER – ALLO ALLO) with goofy inner monologue fail to lighten the film up. Maybe Howman and co are aiming to be the UK version of Tarkovsky. This was more like Emmerdale Farm on ketamine. And there’s no excuse for it’s very strange non-ending. I thought I’d missed a very large point but I hadn’t.

I think I read that Ray Winstone did this for film for free, as part of a family effort. This is one home movie that should have stayed that way. It being a thriller set in Salisbury says it all. It’s true that this is the kind of adventure Salisbury would throw up in real life but there was really no need to make a film about it. Only worth a look for a good but wasted performance from Ray Winstone, who truly looks like he believes in this project. Otherwise avoid like a night on the tiles around Wiltshire’s night clubs. At a running time of under 1Hour and 10 minutes (including credits) this is one unusual dog fart of a home movie. Sometimes blaming your less famous family isn’t enough of an excuse.

2.5 out of 1o – This gets all of it’s points and good will because of Ray Winstone‘s committed performance. Otherwise this is a dead fish of a film. An intriguing idea that is as botched as you possibly get. Pretty awful especially for its experimentation with long takes and static camera work. The ending is an unforgivable cop-out too, I don’t care if it’s realistic, it’s certainly can’t stand as an ending to story. Hard to stay alive let alone awake during this short drip drip drip of a mystery.

This movie would only have work IF the main actor had managed to keep his viewers rivetted with his performance as the grief stricken dad, but this did not happen so I spent and hour an a half waiting for something interesting to happen, and I just wasted my time. Winstone spent the whole film mumbling, which I found irritating,and not at at believable.The end was confusing but from what I could figure out his daughter's best friend's father was sleeping with his little girl and supposedly funding her drug habit that eventually leads her to an early death. So daddy takes his revenge by sleeping with his daughter's best friend???That sounds like a really sick form of revenge to me for a grief stricken father who has just lost his little Princess. But then again I could have misunderstood the end, but considering nothing much happened I can only come to the conclusion I've just mentioned.I really wouldn't recommend renting this DVD. The movie is slow and makes for uncomfortable viewing seeing as Winstone probably felt he wasn't paid enough to actually speak up so his viewers can actually make out what he is saying, so on all fronts this is in my opinion a movie that had to have had alot of work done before public release.

This dull, slow and tepid film has the feel of the first installment of a Tuesday night ITV 'provincial detective' drama - say 'The Cathedral Files', or 'The Teashop Tapes' - only much more cumbersome and irritating. When he isn't glooming around Salisbury, bumbling into characters who seem to have no bearing on the plot, Winstone is staring interminably out of windows and muttering inaudibly.

It moves with glacial slowness, has terrible am-dram dialogue, and features characters with absolutely no depth or personality. Bewilderingly, infuriatingly, after patiently sitting through this turgid offering for over an hour, it just ends, with no denoument whatsoever. What happened there, then ? Did they run out of film ? Or money ? Or enthusiasm ?

Like I said, this would be just about tolerable if there were subsequent episodes to flesh things out - although the thought of another few hours of the same emptiness makes my brain glaze over - but the ending is inexplicable, unwise and just plain stupid.

Only of interest to citizens of that fair Wiltshire city, who no doubt get some kicks out of recognising various landmarks.

We expected so much more from this but watching the film was a complete waste of an hour and a half

Really a most disappointing film. Winstone whispers his dialogue, mostly as a voice-over to the action, which becomes quite annoying as matters proceed. As usual of course, his sheer presence guarantees an audience, but in this film about the grief of a widowed father who loses his daughter to a drug overdose fails to make any kind of impact. As for the storyline, I get tired of small budget films whose makers seem to feel that being small budget and wandering round with a hand held camera or employing amateur actors, are virtues in themselves and that they don't have to make proper films with a beginning, a middle and an end.

I've seen Ray Winstone before in a rather similar small budget film, but he was supported by a brilliant actress who stole the film.

The notion here, that fathers suffer a particular kind of pain with the loss of a daughter but often gets overlooked in the waves of sympathy for the suffering mother is valid. But 'Fathers of Girls' is not a well made film, and Eric Winstone has no one to bounce off. As for the ending, once again, it doesn't even try.

I do hope that, should they make another, entitled' Mothers of Sons', they splash out on a better cast and a few more rolls of film.