Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, Paul Barber, Steve Huison, Paul Clayton, Lesley Sharp, Miles Jupp, Talitha Wing, Natalie Davies, Tom Wilkinson, Sophie Stanton, Dominic Sharkey, Philip Rhys Chaudhary, Joshua Jo, Tupele Dorgu, William Fox, Aiden Cook, Hugo Speer, Wim Snape, Arnold Oceng, Susan Hilton, Bruce Jones, Jessica Lee, Emily Bevan.
Should we ever revisit a success?
Cinema does it all the time, television executives will order a sequel or follow up within a heartbeat of a good review, and even a modern-day author can be offered the opportunity to live someone else’s lifetime over again by writing a continuation of a classic that the original scribe arguably never would have intended to be written.
There in lays the rub of a good story not adhering to its surroundings or to its time frame, and as voyeurs of the screen and the tales that television offers us in the glow of memory, for there are stories of ordinary people, the ones that government don’t like you to know because it embarrasses them, whose lives are more than deserving of a single act in which the objectivity thrown at them for being good sports in a bad position.
Such a truth is to be found majestically in Alice Nutter’s reintroduction to Simon Beaufoy’s cinematic smash hit, The Full Monty.
The themes remain the same, and for that, and despite maybe some hesitancy on the part of others who see growth as an act of progression, the quality of the narrative is real, fluid, life affirming, and full of dramatic melancholy. This is a truth of life, we age, we face the same issues and problems year in year out just perhaps with different people by our side, and occasionally the one who was there two, three decades before will face it with you again.
There is a convincing and subtle beauty to the entire series, the same characters bring their stories up to date, but in reality, nothing has changed. Entropy and corrosion is all around us, the rust of neglect by those whose lives are free of the pain inflicted upon the majority is forever entrenched in the ruins of their continued laws passed which do nothing to address the life-or-death situations faced with desperation and a heart wider and stronger than any in office.
It is in the erosion of Sheffield’s heart that the men who gave their all in the original film cling to, they have moved on from their 15 minutes of fame, but it lingers in the background, and as their lives have taken twists and turns, as Horse is battling an uncaring system with all he has left to give, as the genial and kind-hearted Dave and his wife Jean face the bleakness of loss, and new friend Darren comes to understand the problems facing those who come to Britain in search of peace, so the viewer is greeted like an old friend…no judgements, only sorrow, pain, laughter, and understanding in equal measure.
There will be those who cannot handle the truths displayed, some will even bemoan the idea of a group of older men being given such prominence on screen, and yet as you watch actors such as Robert Carlyle, the genius of Mark Addy and Lesley Sharp, the sheer passion in the agony and realisation of endings to be found in sharp detail by Paul Barber, surely in his most outstanding portrayal on screen, and newcomer Talitha Wing in her role as Gaz’s daughter Destiny, what becomes clear is the search for redemption and a window of happiness which is always denied to all whose family does not drink from a trough made of handed down opportunity.
The Full Monty will break your heart and show your true self, for the divide is a truth, for those on the brink of society’s continual slap in the face, what is needed now is a true redressing of all that has been denied.
Ian D. Hall