Whole Lotta Sole (2012)

This is a guest review by my brother Sam. 

To say I wasn’t quite blown away by Whole Lotta Sole does the term ‘blown away’ something of an injustice. It’s not entirely joyless, but this action comedy was severely lacking in the elements of either genre. It’s hard to believe this came from the same man who gave us Hotel Rwanda and In the Name of the Father.

The title made me a little hesitant to begin with. ‘Whole Lotta Sole’ just rung a bit too heavily of cheap late-90s Not-Quite-Curtis Brit flicks for a film released in 2012. It comes from the name of the fish market which is robbed in the film, and although the robbery is central to the plot, the market is not. It’s almost as if Terry George came up with the name first, and then the storyline, which would explain a lot. It is, of course, a pun on ‘Whole Lot of Soul’, which ironically is an area in which the film is really lacking. It does try. I know you’re meant to feel for central character Joe Maguire, played by a puffy-looking Brendan Fraser, as he gets caught up in the botched robbery around which the main plot is based, and even more so for young Jimbo (Martin McCann) who committed it. But McCann’s attempt as a desperate and vulnerable young father driven far out his depth into crime is screechy, irritating and far too bumbling to be truly believable. Fraser is simply lethargic.

My main quandary with this film is that it doesn’t really seem to have been given the attention it could’ve done with, or more importantly the attention I would expect from a director like George. The premise of the story is basically good, but the execution comes across as lazy. For instance, naming David O’Hara’s gravel-voiced gangster, and the film’s chief villain, ‘Mad Dog’ Flynn, must’ve took all of the 10 seconds it took to flick through a Beano. The continuously clunky script is something of a reality bungee cord, that just as you manage to let yourself get drawn in, pulls you back out with a thoughtless line that doesn’t quite wash. And there are far too many unnecessary sub-plots and supporting characters that are not given enough time or detail to provide any significant value. The character of Detective Weller’s (Colm Meaney) son Randy in particular feels like it was written purely because poor Michael Legge was promised a decent amount of lines. These sub-plots then take away from precious time that really could be used to give the main plotline a bit of much needed texture.

Whole Lotta Sole is a half-arsed delivery of what, with a bit of work, really could have been a decent light-hearted comedy. The result is an awkward and sometimes tiresome film that delivers a few good laughs, almost entirely involving the ever brilliant Colm Meaney’s exasperated detective, but little else, and comes across as far lower budget than it actually is. For a British film, it’s not what you’d call low budget, costing around double that of Filth, Alpha Papa or Starred Up for instance. Yet at times the production values seem very ‘Doctor Who’. It makes you wonder how much Brendan Fraser cost to look so dour, and whether Gordon Brown in his, what I’m pretty certain was a slightly gingered up wig, could’ve done the same for cheaper. There’s no denying Terry George’s genius, but based on Whole Lotta Sole I really think he prefers to write and direct slightly more serious films. Films with a little more…let’s say intensity, it’s kinder.

Rating: 

Certificate: 15
Director: Terry George
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Colm Meaney and Martin McCann
Running Time: 89 mins