Navigation

A Day of Violence (2009)

Dir: Darren Ward

A bloodied corpse lies on a morgue trolley...This is its story.
Mitchell Parker (Nick Rendell) is a ruthless ‘debt collector’ for gangland boss Casey (Harold Gasnier).
He is sent to collect money owed by a lowlife named Hopper (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) but finds more cash than he expected, £100,000 to be precise

After taking care of Hopper, Mitchell pockets the money for himself and tells an enraged Casey he’s got a better job offer from rival gang boss Boswell (Victor D Thorn).
But little does Mitchell know that Hopper has recorded him taking the money on his mobile phone.

Doubly unfortunate for Mitchell is that his first job for the sadistic and unforgiving Boswell is to get back £100,000 owed to him by some guy named Hopper…..!

 

Roughly 12 years after Darren Ward’s damn fine feature debut “Sudden Fury” the director returned to feature film making with this hyper-violent, super gory, gangland thriller that once again highlights the positives and the negatives in Ward’s style and approach.
A decade or so of technological advances in video cameras and Ward’s own honed skills has ensured that “A Day of Violence“ certainly looks much better (the odd dark sequence aside) than “Sudden Fury” as well as being more professionally edited with better scene transitions and set-ups.

It also has much better FX work (and those in “Fury” were pretty damn good) and much more of it (all practical once again as Ward shows that he is still one of the most accomplished flag flyers for good old fashioned practical FX in cinema today) and the film packs an even harder, nastier punch than even “Sudden Fury” due to how these excellent effects are used and just how damn realistic they are.
This is top class make-up work (supervised by Alastair Vardey) and Ward knows just how to film the effects to show them off to their best advantage. Technically and artistically, Ward is as good as they come.

But the same problem of some dodgy dialogue and less than stellar acting, which marred certain moments of “Fury”, are still here…and in some ways here to a greater degree thanks to the far more thriller/drama structured plot of “Day” compared to the more straight ahead action movie structure of “Fury”.

Once again the lead role, of Mitchell, is taken by “Fury” leading man Nick Rendell who once again handles the action well and looks suitably imposing.
But he is given far more dialogue to handle here than previously and often this leads to some less than convincing moments of drama.
As a support role heavy, or dialogue-lite lead, Rendell works well, but he sadly struggles with a role like that of Mitchell.
But as said he handles action well and oozes imposing violence.

Victor D Thorn as the gangster boss Boswell also suffers here.
He was actually lots of fun in “Sudden Fury” and did a good job, but his part was much smaller with far less dialogue.
In “Day” he simply overacts his role (not helped by some wildly over the top insult filled dialogue) to such an extent that he becomes wearisome.
I can’t help but wonder just how much better things would have been if this important role was played by the next actor I’m gong to mention, the real surprise casting choice in a low budget British thriller…Giovanni Lombardo Radice!

Anyone with a love of horror/exploitation cinema and general ‘Euro Trash’ goodness will know the legendary Radice from such gore and/or sleaze classics as “Cannibal Ferox”, “House on the Edge of the Park”, “City of the Living Dead” and “Cannibal Apocalypse”.
Bald and sporting a fantastically eccentric beard, Radice is just wonderful in his tiny but important role and spits out weasel dialogue (no one ever played scheming weasels better!) and angry disdain, due to his mistreatment at Mitchell’s hands, with bombastic professionalism.
Plus his perfect command of English also means that his performance is never hampered by linguistic hurdles and as such I can’t see any reason (except perhaps monetary, but even then Radice is still a cult actor) why he can’t have been given a bigger role…and as in the role of the sadistic gang boss he would have excelled and quite simply lifted the movie to a higher level.
Radice, on the “Cannibal Apocalypse” DVD, expressed regret that Quentin Tarantino (given his genre movie love) had not offered him a role in any of his movies, thus it is with a cruel irony we see a poster for Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” project on the wall of his character’s grimy flat.
Well, judging by what we see in “A Day of Violence” this casting oversight is Tarantino’s loss as much as Radice’s and Daren Ward is to be applauded.

Some other performances are also worth a mentioning though.
Christopher Fosh (“Jack Says”) is fun as Boswell’s top heavy hitter ’Chisel’ and like Rendell makes for an imposing figure.
And Tina Barnes (“The Witch’s Hammer”) is very good, though underused, as Mitchell’s put upon Wife and makes a damn fine early impression during the opening love making scene, where she reveals she has a figure to match her fine acting talents.

As an action film “Day” is less fun than “Fury” because the shoot-out action is shorter in duration and takes longer to make an appearance due to the stronger ‘thriller’ blueprint that “Day“ follows (and in the one FX surprise the glorious blood squibs of “Fury” are toned down for the most part) but as before Ward shows how to handle such action scenes in a way that belies the low budget he has to work with.
Again the guns look good and sound good, the set-ups, direction and ‘action acting’ is spot on and although some aspects of the finale pub shootout are needlessly over the top as far as ‘civilian’ carnage is concerned, once again Ward shows how it’s done as far as delivering professional looking scenes of complex gun mayhem is concerned.

If the squib bloodshed (although we do still have numerous well done bullet hits) slightly disappoints, the carnage away from the barrel of a gun is probably even above and beyond anything seen in “Sudden Fury”.
A stunning throat slitting demise (that even looks perfect in extreme close-up), tooth abuse, grotesque facial mutilation, a spurting punctured jugular and a brutal and graphic as hell castration scene, via a pair of shears, (surely destined to go down in extreme cinema infamy) are some of the gore highlights here and under Ward’s watchful directorial eye and John Raggett’s unflinching, excellent, camera work these scenes of FX perfection carry a real gut-punch power.

Backing it all is a wonderful electronic/guitar score, by newcomer Dave Andrews, whose exciting but ominous tones punctuates and drives the on-screen action perfectly.

It’s strange that two Euro horror stalwarts (and Lucio Fulci cast members) like David Warbeck (in “Sudden Fury”) and Giovanni Lombardo Radice both ended up in Darren Ward’s explicit, balls-out, very British gangster/action films, but somehow it seems fitting as Ward’s film making (and the great “A Day of Violence” poster, by the legendary 80's horror/cult movie artist Graham Humphreys, backs this up) highlights an obvious love for classic era Euro gore-horror and hard-nosed/violent Euro thrillers just as much as any Brit gangster movie influences.
And when backed up with top class technical skill and truly superlative FX work this unlikely combination of influences and past links to genre cinema manage to deliver something pretty special, especially where British cinema is concerned.

And if “A Day of Violence” isn’t quite as much popcorn fun as “Sudden Fury” and even if Ward the screenwriter needs to tone down the shouty, clichéd dialogue a bit and Ward the director needs to get some finer honed actors into crucial roles, “Day” still shows a drive, an energy and a ballsy and uncompromising attitude to delivering some sadly mistreated and forgotten action movie trappings back into British cinema.
And if British horror cinema has been having a great revival recently, then Darren Ward and co (along with the likes of Ross "10 Dead Men" Boyask) could well be the ones to ensure that tough British crime cinema makes a comeback too.

 

“Sudden Fury” is already out on DVD and “A Day of Violence” is due for an (amazingly) uncut UK release on August 9th 2010 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.
Darren Ward’s production company ‘Giallo Films’ can be found at http://www.giallofilms.com