First Hit: It started off well but faded as the film moved along then ended with a thud.
This strong cast of Ray Winstone (playing Colin Diamond), John Hurt (playing old man peanut), Tom Wilkinson (playing Archie), Ian McShane (playing Meredith), Stephen Dillane (playing Mal), and Dave Legeno (playing Brighton Billy), are close friends gathering together to support one of their own.
Colin has come home to his wife Liz (played by Joanne Whalley) who proceeds to tell him that she has met another man and doesn’t love him any longer. He pleads with her to understand how could this be the case after 21 years and that she is everything to him.
She doesn't relent and in his anger he tries to strangle her. To escape she runs through a sliding glass door window. He contacts Archie, who contacts the others in the group who gather together to help him. This assistance consists of the group kidnapping this man from his job as a waiter in a restaurant and depositing him in a wardrobe cabinet in a deserted building.
Gathered together, they sit Colin in front of the wardrobe expecting him to take his revenge out on this young man. Most of the film centers around how they encourage him with their rants and their own sick ways of viewing the situation. Each person has a different focus, but they are in agreement that Colin must extract his revenge.
However, Colin doesn't know what to do he is so hurt. As brisk as the dialog is at the beginning, it loses steam and the film eventually falls flat.
Winstone has been better (See him in Edge of Darkness). Hurt is ranting and shows little else in and of his character. Wilkinson is the only one who seems to have some character development that is meaningful. The writers, Louis Mellis and David Scinto, had an interesting idea but seem to have gotten lost in creating intense and intense dialogue which kept the film from moving along.
Overall: Where "Glengarry Glen Ross", was filled with intense and competitive dialogue which moved the film along, this film is filled with intense dialogue and which makes the film fizzle out.