Christie Malry's Own Double Entry [DVD]

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

• 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

"It deserves to be seen several times over."

"One of the most exciting and original British movies I’ve seen>"

"… a real blast."

"If you don’t like this, stop going to the cinema."

"The first great film of the 21st Century"

"I want money, sex and loads of it" – Christie Malry.

Christie Malry (Nick Moran) is an average-looking twentysomething. But beneath the surface, he harbours deep frustration borne of living with and caring for his bitter cancer-ridden mother (Shirley Anne Field). Working for a bank manager he doesn’t respect and being so near to vast amounts of money he will never own fuels his macabre fantasies of sex and violence. He’s going nowhere fast; he needs a reason and a focus for his malaise. Finally, a glimmer of hope emerges when at an evening class in accountancy, Christie discovers the principles of double-entry bookkeeping. When Christie devises his own system, a ledger outlining his personal debit and credit accounts, the picture soon becomes clear. Debit society for offences given, credit Christie for offences avenged – all accounts to be settled in full.