Daily Mail - 30.08.2019

Page 49

... AND

HIS MUM

Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019

ROUGH, TOUGH AND IN THE BUFF!

A Million Little Pieces (15)

Verdict: Interesting but flawed ★★★✩✩

Vulture

Ifyouseeonething...

THE

JAMES FREY is a reformed crack addict

and alcoholic, who got clean, sobered up,

and wrote a thunderously successful

memoir called A Million Little Pieces,

parts of which he was later found to

have invented.

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s drama, of which

Frey is one of the executive producers,

offers no hint of the controversy. It begins

with Frey (played by the director’s

husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, right) in a

drug-addled frenzy at the end of which he

falls backwards off a balcony. His family

then contrive to get him put on a plane to

Minneapolis, where his brother checks him

into a rehabilitation clinic. The film,

co-written by Sam and Aaron Taylor-

Johnson, follows his experiences in rehab.

It’s tough to watch, which of course is no

criticism; done properly, films like this

always are. But it suffers unnecessarily

from a dearth of characterisation. Frey

arrives on screen fully formed as an addict

and leaves it well on the way to recovery.

Except for a whimsical sequence in which

he sits on a bench next to his younger self,

we are told very little of his story, his back-

ground, his personality, which makes it

difficult to root for him. We learn that he

broke his parents’ hearts, but that’s the

first and last we hear of them. His brother

(Charlie Hunnam) features only briefly.

Maybe this is deliberate, encouraging us

to define him only by his addiction and his

efforts to overcome it, which are facili-

tated by his growing friendship with a

fellow patient, Lilly (Odessa Young). But

two other recent films with the same

theme, last year’s Beautiful Boy and Ben Is

Back, gripped me much more because I

felt an investment in their central charac-

ters, which is lacking here.

All that said, Taylor-Johnson gives a heck

of a performance, not so much acting his

heart out as acting his guts up. He gets

charismatic support too from Billy Bob

Thornton, playing another patient, who

becomes his mentor. I was reminded at

times of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

(1975), which is never a bad thing.

One final observation: there are a couple

of pretty gratuitous full-frontal shots of

Taylor-Johnson naked, his admittedly

arresting manhood there for all the world

to see. I wondered about this, knowing

that the director is his wife. It feels a little

like boasting, on her part if not his.

ON SHOW

BRIDGETRILEY

‘OP ART’ as it was

once called, had a

great vogue in the

1960s but Bridget

Riley, one of its

founders, who has

been working for

60 years, is the last

one standing, and

now sometimes called our ‘greatest

living painter’. This is the first

museum exhibition of her paintings

for 16 years, so you can judge

for yourself.

■ ROYAL Scottish Academy,

Edinburgh, until September 22

ROBIN SIMON

ON TOUR

FUSIONFESTIVAL

KiNGs

of Leon,

rudimental,

right, and

Little Mix are

among the

acts visiting

Liverpool’s

sefton Park this weekend for the

fusion Presents and fusion festivals.

the entertainment gets underway

today (august 30) as Kings of Leon

are joined by franz ferdinand, Jake

Bugg, echo & the Bunnymen and

sam fender for the rock­orientated

fusion Presents. tomorrow’s sister

event, fusion festival, features

rudimental and continues into

sunday with Little Mix, anne­Marie

and Mabel (thefusionfestival.co.uk).

ADRIAN THRILLS

ON TV

THECAPTURE

COULD this edgy

thriller, which taps

into very modern

concerns over

surveillance, be the

new Bodyguard?

Callum Turner plays

a soldier accused of

the abduction of a young woman.

The CCTV footage seems conclusive

— but the case is not as simple as it

first appears. Holliday Grainger,

above, is the detective digging

deeper. Stay tuned for Hollywood

stars Famke Janssen and Ron

Perlman in later episodes.

■ TUESDAY, 9pm, BBC1.

MIKE MULVIHILL

ON STAGE

HANSARD

HoW about this

for timing? Lindsay

duncan and alex

Jennings, right, star in

simon Woods’s play

about a tory politician

(Jennings) returning to his Cotswold

home in 1988 to find it in disarray. His

wife (duncan) has a filthy hangover

and a fox has destroyed the garden.

Could this somehow be a metaphor

for the malaise of today’s political

elite? simon Godwin directs on the

National’s Lyttelton stage.

■ PREVIEWING now, opens Tuesday,

National Theatre, London (020 7452

3000 or nationaltheatre.org.uk).

PATRICK MARMION

they discern an inner steel

beneath the prettiness, forged

out of the capable stoicism of all

those female english forebears

making their own marmalade

and sending their officer­class

men off to war.

Whatever, Wilcox is another

tough cookie, inflexible and even

unscrupulous in the pursuit of

bad guys. But Koslow is the one

taking all the mortal risks.

He is a Gulf War hero, who

returned to civilian life with post­

traumatic stress disorder and

ended up doing a jail term after

killing a man in a bar fight for

abusing his pretty wife.

then he was sprung from the

notorious Bale Hill prison by the

fBi, on the understanding that

he would use his skills to go

undercover in the Polish mafia.

Koslow’s job for the mob is to

shepherd drugs, smuggled into

the U.s. in a diplomatic bag,

through the Polish consulate in

New york.

once he has helped to nail the

nasty Mr Big masterminding the

operation, he will be absolved of

his responsibilities to the feds.

But then a drug deal goes disas­

trously awry, ending in the death

of a police officer. the crime boss

blames Koslow, who, by way of

penance, and with his beloved

wife and daughter held as

bargaining tools, must become

an inmate again at Bale Hill in

order to take control of drugs

distribution there.

the Polish overlord will not only

make vast sums of money from

needy prisoners, but can also

manipulate them when they

come out.

so Koslow returns to the prison

he worked so hard to leave, which

is oK because he has the fBi to

protect him, or thinks he does.

Wilcox’s boss is a treacherous

cove played by British actor Clive

owen, although the sneaky

feds might just have met their

match in a determined NyPd

detective (played by the rapper

Common), who is investigating

the death of his colleague in the

botched drug deal.

originally, this film was titled

three seconds, after the novel by

the swedish author anders

roslund on which it is based.

the italian director andrea di

stefano has adapted it skilfully,

with help from a British screen­

writer, rowan Joffe.

that’s an admirably multina­

tional team behind a film

that feels not just distinctly

american but carries that

particular whiff of New york City

underbelly, of sweat and pretzels

and acrid steam rising from

subway gratings.

CK MAN