Tony
Well, this indeed is a curio. Gerard Johnson takes the often glamorised subject matter of serial killing and drags the seediest parts of it to inner city London, warts and all. A human study in its purest form, the film centres around the eponymous Tony, a long-term unemployed rakish and withered nobody, the likes of which you and I pass on the streets every day and do our best to ignore and avoid in equal measure. Behind his locked and gated front door, we find an undecorated home, littered only with the corpses that Tony keeps for company, along with a television that has no reception and a collection of action films on VHS, as he doesn’t have a DVD player.
Tony spends much of his daylight hours merely wandering the streets looking for people to talk to and failing to fit into a society that doesn’t understand him any more than he understands it. When he does make a connection, it usually ends badly, from chavs, gay clubbers to tv licence inspectors all coming off worse after a visit to his council flat. His victims all appear to be men, and this may or may not be intentional, but only a female neighbour escapes his final, fatal spindly clutches.
Peter Ferdinando plays Tony excellently. He brings an ordinary, even avoidance inducing side to the character that makes Tony’s escapades so much more believable as he goes about his under-the-radar activities. Most of his killings are spur of the moment needs to escape from situations that he has wittingly or unwittingly brought about himself most notably in the name of companionship, but nevertheless shows no remorse for his actions, cutting up his victims in the sink or bathtub when they have passed their sell-by date for company. Knowing his background, it makes just watching him walking the street with a blue plastic bag full of who knows what completely riveting.
As a measure of acting prowess, Ferdinando provides what could easily be a blueprint for characterisation, so impressive is his turn. Johnson and he have created an unassuming monster of a man that bears close scrutiny and personally I could have watched the performance for at least twice as long as we were offered. If I have one criticism of the film, it would be that it is too short, and it leaves the viewer frustrated that the only thing that we can be sure of is that Tony will go on.
The most chilling part of the film as a whole is that it is so well realised and stifled in a banal reality we all have some recognition of, in characters that are so well played and unfortunately believable, that we can easily imagine that this could go on in our streets, in our towns, so basic is its premise and unglamorous setting.
I am immensely glad to have seen it, and of everything I have seen in 2010 so far, this is probably the best thing yet, and it will stay with me for some time as I walk past those same potential Tony’s on my street. Well done to the Film Council, Johnson and Ferdinando. If you are not squeamish and like your drama up front, in your face, and very possibly real, then I urge you to see it.
Grisly and uncomfortable but a nonetheless unique and considered view of its subject matter, approaching an often neglected personality type and opening a hitherto unseen world to its audience.
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