“Lies. Betrayal. Murder. Just another day
at the office” [1] . That‘s the tagline
for this dark comedy neo-noir crime thriller, which is based on a screenplay
written by John Niven. It is based upon a book with the same title that was
written by Niven in 2008 and he used some of his experiences during his brief
career in the music industry. The novel has been described as being one of the
best British novels since Trainspotting was released. The film is a starring
vehicle for Nicholas Hoult, who has gained a name for himself from his
appearances in Warm Bodies, the new X-Men trilogy as the character Beast, and
also in Mad Max: Fury Road as Nux.
Hoult stars as Steven Stelfox, a
twenty-seven-year old A&R man working for London Records in 1997 during the
big Britpop music craze when Oasis and Muse debuted. He is fueled less on
making good music as opposed to moving up the career ladder, with the goal to
be the head of the A&R department. Stelfox is the personification of what
we think the music industry is like, he is fueled and driven by his greed,
cocaine, sex, alcohol, and the party lifestyle. He doesn’t even care about
making good music or finding interesting bands, he just wants to get the next
hit single that will help him get promoted. When the industry starts to change
and he is going to get passed up for the promotion that he wants, he sets out to kill the
coworkers that are standing in his way. Without giving anything else away plot
wise, there is no limit to what he’s willing to do in order to advance his career.
This film has been compared to American
Psycho and Filth because of the main characters in all three of these are
psychotic in some way, and yet we end up being really intrigued by them. Some
reviews have said that Stelfox is just a straight rip off of the characters Patrick
Bateman (Christian Bale) and Bruce (James McAvoy). While they are all three
psychotic and also all were originally created in novels first, there are
differences in all three characters and their stories. Bateman lives a very wealthy lifestyle as
an investment banker, but his violence and murders are more about his enjoyment
in the acts of killing someone. It may have started out as rage over a coworker’s
business card being more lavish and then evolved into more of a fantasy fulfillment.
Bruce is a detective that has a borderline personality disorder and is bipolar,
who spends most of his time indulging in the excesses of drugs, alcohol, sex,
and trying to turn his colleagues against each other. His wife and kid have
left him and he feels like the promotion is the one thing that will bring them
back. He ends up screwing up a murder investigation and is discovered to
have been cross-dressing pretending to be his wife, which leads to a demotion. Bruce
never kills anyone; it’s his reckless lifestyle and mental illnesses that end up bringing
him down. Without giving much away to both of these movies, neither character
ends up winning in the end. The major differences between both of them and Stelfox is
that he kills people solely to improve his job status and he kind of makes out
a lot better than the other two do in the end.
This isn’t going to go down as the best
movie from 2016, but it may be considered one of the most underrated and end up
becoming a cult film. The dark themes instantly make it one that is going to be
somewhat controversial and will only have a certain niche audience, there is
enough violence, nudity, and murder in it to turn some people away. Two things
stand out though; Nicholas Hoult and the music. Hoult is a star and he is thoroughly
engaging as this character, while narrating the story and occasionally breaking
the fourth wall. Like Tom Hardy, this is the type of actor that you expect to
be good in everything and want to seek out movies that he is in. The other
thing that really stands out is the music, which is a mix of mostly popular
British music from that time period including Blur, the Chemical Brothers,
Oasis, and Prodigy.
If you liked American Psycho, Filth, or
anything that Nicholas Hoult has been in then you should definitely check this
one out. If I had to actually give a rating, then I’d say somewhere around 3.5
out of 4 stars. But that rating could also mean my sanity level is not all that there. So just as a warning, some of you may find this movie offensive and totally unredeemable.
Works Cited
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[1]
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"IMDB,"
IMDB, 28 3 2016. [Online]. Available:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2474958/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1. [Accessed 28 3 2016].
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