This is a semi-forgotten film that got advertised largely by the presence of Tom Waits. This isn't unnatural since he was the most recognizable face in the film - there are a couple of character actors from Britain, Bill Paterson and Alex Norton, who have appeared in many things, and Charlotte Coleman - but the film was (or, if it is at all today, continues to be) sold on Waits, and of course he is the major reason to see the film. This doesn't mean to say the movie is *bad*, and it actually is enjoyable and engaging in parts. The main problem at the script level is that the two filmmakers don't know how to keep the tonal glue together, and not even Waits' cool can save that.
This is a movie that reminds me a little of something from Guy Ritchie (especially those bits where the two gangsters argue about crabs and shellfish and such nonsense in the car) or Roeg/Camell's Performance where a criminal on the run due to gambling debts takes a job as an "Entertainer's Assistant" and becomes part of the work of a young mute woman, Laura, and the man who does the Punch & Judy puppet show for local kids, Silva, played by Waits. It's a scattershot kind of story, in ways both good and not so good, but it's all anchored by Waits' performance. I wish I could tell you Damon Lowry (uh, who?) brings the goods as well, but he's only 'fine' as one might say. The other performers only bring so much, i.e. one actor you can tell is a bad guy due to a ponytail.
Matter of fact, without him in it and how he has a very particular physicality (watch how he can as an actor inhabit a space so seemingly with little effort and slink about an actress like the one playing Ms J in a scene) and that voice, which is truly distinctive, this movie wouldn't be very memorable at all. What the filmmakers are trying to do is what the title suggests, create a 'fairy-tale' out of a story that has a lot of elements of crime and the underworld and seedy things like violence and rape (that second thing comes out of *nowhere* in the story, simply as a plot device for Johnny that could have been done in a more clever or less typical way). They aren't at all poor directors and in fact have a good sense of where to put the camera and locations and where to set the scene. It's at the script where things feel... odd and unresolved at points. Think like if Guy Ritchie during his crime movie hey-day only put in half the work that was needed.
And yet, while the whole never quite comes together and a certain "twist" that really isn't doesn't work at all involving a character's supposed death, I enjoyed this more than I expected. Again a good lot of this comes down to being a fan of Waits and how he clearly took what was a fairly standard "cool" guy on paper and made him... legitimately cool, and that he can be in a leather jacket and smoke a cigarette but that isn't what does the acting for him, it's him and his soul and what he is as a person. If the rest of the story and the cast rose up to his level then this would be more highly regarded today. But it's not so here we are with an obscurity that is seeing another light of day due to Amazon Prime.
