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Amazon.co.uk Review
Christie Malry's Own Double Entry is the revenge fantasy of a resentful, humiliated, somewhat simple office wage-slave who undergoes an epiphany in the unlikely surroundings of a lecture on accountancy. Malry, superbly depicted by Nick Moran as a sort of English Timothy McVeigh, decides to allocate a monetary value to every single act of, as he puts it, "casualness, indifference and mass carelessness" that besets him, and to exact appropriate recompense. As the debt grows, so do Malry's retributions, from disfiguring the paintwork of a Rolls-Royce to poisoning a substantial percentage of London.
Based on the novel by B.S. Johnson, the film is funny and clever, making inventive use of flashbacks, and the echoes of broadly similar fables, like Taxi Driver and Falling Down, are never loud enough to be distracting. An overall atmosphere of tensing malevolence is abetted by a terrific soundtrack of original songs by Auteurs and Black Box Recorder songwriter Luke Haines. The only duff notes the film strikes are the initially engaging but eventually utterly baffling excursions to the Renaissance court of an Italian prince. Aside from this one over-ambitious conceit, this is a fine and mystifyingly under-rated film.
On the DVD: Christie Malry's Own Double Entry includes only the original theatrical trailer as a special feature. It is all too easy to imagine that an advertisement for a product you've already paid for is exactly the kind of thing that Christie Malry would have entered in the "Debit" side of his ledger. --Andrew Muller
Special Features
- Theatrical trailer
- Director’s commentary
- Nick Moran commentary
- Photo Gallery
- Film and Characters feature
- Novel to Screen feature
- Soundtrack feature
- What the papers said
- Plus exclusive interview with Paul Tickell
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unexpectedly tame and unambitious,
By
This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double Entry [DVD] (DVD)
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry isn't a porno, although it does try its best to be shocking. A sort of British Fight Club-lite, it's failure to secure proper distribution in the UK caused a minor tremor of interest in the local media, but it seems all-too understandable - far from being too hard-hitting, it's actually rather flat and not nearly as outrageous as it thinks it is. Indeed, it feels more Billy Liar than The Anarchist's Cookbook, with Christie's revenge fantasies tame and clichéd stuff. Nick Moran's interpretation of the simple urban terrorist as a simpleton (aided and abetted by some particularly bad dialog) doesn't help matters. The scenes in Renaissance Italy are interesting, but they never really belong in the film and fail to comment on the central narrative to such an extent that you wonder what they're actually doing here. Not terrible, just a completely neutral experience. Just to add to the disappointment, many of the extras listed on the sleeve aren't on the disc, where you'll only find and audio commentary by Paul Tickell and Nick Moran, text interview with Tickell and trailer
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointment,
By A Customer
This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double Entry [DVD] (DVD)
Although this probably isn't the worst film made in Britain in recent years, it is truly disappointing to fans of the book. All the humour and wit of the novel has been lost in the adaptation, while a number of additions have been made (references to Princess Diana, IRA bombings, the Gulf War) that fail to add anything of substance. The extended scenes in Renaissance Italy are moderately interesting, but don't really add anything to the understanding of the main story. While the novel does have excerpts from Fra Luca Bartolomeo Pacioli's treatise, the film uses this as an excuse to include a biography of Leonardo da Vinci (the two men were contemporaries and friends), rather than place Christie's own disaffection within the context of capitalism, as the book does. While in the book Christie is 'a simple man', Nick Moran seems to play him as a simpleton who is unable to express himself except in monosyllables. In brief, read the book and avoid the film.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
One of the worst DVD releases I've ever seen.,
By
This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double Entry [DVD] (DVD)
I picked this up for well under £5 in a discount bargain bin after having seen the film a few months before on TV. Had I paid more money for it I would have been deeply disappointed and possibly would have taken it back for a refund. This is without question one of the worst DVD releases I've ever seen. The film has been transferred in the 4:3 ratio (the cinema releases was shot in the 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio, so at least 50% of the image has been cropped) and the sound has been reproduced in a distorted 2.0 mono. Added to that, the colours that had seemed so vibrant and appealing on the TV broadcast are now dull and muddy; whilst the flashback scenes, which employ a great deal of subtitles are so fuzzy that the on screen text is often hard to make out. Worse than this however, is the fact that the back of the DVD sleeve promises a number of additional extra features that are nowhere to be found on the actual disk.
Amongst these absent additions are a "book to screen feature", a "photo gallery", a "character feature" and a special "soundtrack feature" with Luke Haines. All of these features are listed on the back of the DVD but don't seem to be present on the actual disk. Also, the features that are advertised and are on the DVD don't actually live up to their description. The interview with the director for example is text only, meaning that we have to scroll through page after page of yellow text on an orange background (not the easiest thing to read) whilst the two commentaries on offer (one from the director and one from lead actor Nick Moran) is actually one commentary between the two men. This is a real shame, since a film like Christie Malry - although far from being a masterpiece - is certainly a lot better than a number of other British films released in the last ten years, and does seem to be pushing the envelope in a completely cinematic sense. The visuals of the version I saw on TV were superb throughout, with director Paul Tickle employing a number of Peter Greenaway's key-collaborators to produce a British film that is more in tune with A Zed & Two Noughts or The Pillow Book than something like Notting Hill or The Football Factory. This naturally makes the short comings of this particular DVD release all the more saddening, since this is a British film that is really trying to make a difference in the realm of world cinema. Hopefully one day, when this film finds a more substantial audience, it may receive a more substantial DVD release. Until then however, you'd be better off just reading Johnson's original novel, whilst listening to the great soundtrack by Luke Haines.
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