Downtime

You see there's a pattern now in the film industry - Hollywood does action films, because they cost so much to make, and the Brits do comedy or drama. The strength of the Brits is that they produce gritty, real life films that contrast with the Hollywood approach where everyone's wealthy and attractive.

Downtime is a worthwhile attempt at a British style action film. Incidentally the location is Newcastle, not Liverpool as stated by the chap from Norway. I realise that I'm in a minority but I liked it and could relate to the characters and the situation.

It was a nice touch to have a hero who, as well as climbing liftshafts, is asthmatic. The ending in the hospital is fine too. I love the part where Paul McGann asks the gunman to wait a moment while he discusses his relationship with the mother. It's not the best film ever made but its a 6 or 7 out of 10 and doesn't deserve its current average score of 4.2!

When police psychologist Rob is called to a run-down and near empty council tower block he (sort of) helps to rescue Chrissy from an attempted suicide. However the media spotlight temporarily placed on those that live in the squalid and crime-infested environment brings the yobbish actions of the teenage Jacko to the fore – not something he likes and he immediately stamps his authority back onto the flats. Rob however, can't stop thinking about Chrissy and returns to the flats to see her again, which is probably not that good an idea.

The idea seems simple enough and, although on a bigger budget and with guns the claustrophobic setting of a tower block (of sorts) worked well in Die Hard. However the problems in Downtime are far too great to overcome – the weak characters, the lack of pace, the simplicity of the plot and the generally average writing. The film looks good with the grimy dankness of a council tower block but other than that it is sorely lacking in most areas. The plot creates some tense moments but mostly it stops and starts, to the detriment of the film; generally the story doesn't work as an idea and lacks the sort of tension it needs. Likewise the contrast between the visual style and the main characters doesn't work – the flirting between Chrissy and Rob might have worked in a big silly action movie but with such grim "reality" all around it just doesn't ring true and neither of them are any good as characters. The rest of the block's inhabitants are also weak and they contribute to the lack of involvement I felt in the story.

The cast try hard but they can't really get the tone of the film any better than the director or writer. McGann is OK but he is a bit too annoying to lead the film. Lynch has energy but her constant swearing and the lack of "reality" in her character means that she doesn't fit that well – in another film she would have been the best thing but here she is just part of the problem. Graham and his gang are off-the-shelf clichés without any real value other than plot devices while the rest of the cast are OK in filler roles.

Overall a fairly average film at best. It has some tense moments but the whole thing lacks consistency across the characters, the action and the whole tone. It probably does enough to distract but very little of it seems to fit together convincingly and I'd lost interest in it long before the silly and dull hospital denouncement.

Paul McGann plays an asthmatic police shrink with a fear of heights (and sore feet) who saves a woman from committing suicide. He then decides to ask her out on a date, but they -and her little son- end up in a collapsing elevator in the woman's apartment building (located in a poor district of Liverpool, where everything looks like something out of an Aki Kaurismäki-film). An odd mix of social comment with echoes of -would you believe- "The Towering Inferno"! In the end we don't really care what happens to any of the characters. All though you might ask yourself why the buildings sick and demented juveniles (who plays a major role in the elevator-incident) suddenly disappear for a major portion of the film.

Bharat Nalluri's 'Downtime' is a curiously assembled film; one part social realism to one part disaster movie. It combines a portrayal of working class life (albeit a very extreme depiction) with a sequence of thriller-style life-or-death moments; between them, the film's characters face death not just through the incident which is the film's centrepiece, a lift failure, but also through suicide, asthma, a potential shooting and two separate fires. Structurally, the film is also odd, as the lift-based story occupies the bulk of the film, but a further dramatic incident (by no means a necessary continuation) ensures that the conclusion links only weakly to what has gone before. But there are some pluses. Some of the scenes are shot very effectively (one made me physically wince), and Paul McGann and Susan Lynch play off each other nicely in the lead role (although another strange twist is that while Lynch's young son features in almost every scene, he appears to be virtually dumb, as he hardly speaks a line in the entire film). Nalluri is perhaps a director to watch on the basis of the talent he shows here; he just needs to work out what sort of movies he wants to make first.

This is an underrated, decent little thriller. It probably cost peanuts compared to 'Speed', and the Elevator bit in this film was just as exciting as any I've ever seen.

Paul McGann isn't exactly an action hero type. He's just a bit too nice to be an action hero. But how many British actors match up to someone like Bruce Willis, so I guess he was as good a choice as any. I think it was a good thing that he was a sensitive, slightly wimpy with the asthma, and afraid of heights, because this made him a much better Romantic Hero. He, boyishly attempting to ask Susan Lynch out, and she swearing at him, was funny and sweet.

The film ending without solving any of the problems of the residents of the building (I mean that mean kid was never punished), but ending with Chrissy agreeing to go out with Rob, seems to imply that this was just a Romantic comedy all along.