Surfacing this week on the Plex streaming service is Fixer, a political satire that reunites a few familiar faces from the films of much missed auteur Michael J Murphy, as well as continuing the Murphy tradition of low, low budget filmmaking in the Portsmouth area.
Patrick Olliver stars as Thomas Chalk, a fascistic political candidate who sells himself to the public as a Churchillian figure. Phil Lyndon plays his 'Fixer' a piece of hired muscle whose job it is to discredit and/or brutalise those that stand in Chalk's way. Another Murphy regular Steven Longhurst, briefly shows up as one of Chalk's liberal opponents, whose career is quickly destroyed by a covertly filmed S&M session.
The only real spanner in the works of Chalk's rise to power is his out of control son Adam, whose potentially embarrassing partying ways causes Chalk to partner Adam up with the Fixer. Resulting in a sort of buddy comedy in which the mismatched duo of Adam and the Fixer drive around the mean streets of Portsmouth and Adam receives a crash course in the violent and underhand tactics his father is prepared to stoop to in order to gain political office. From a 2023 perspective it's difficult not to think of a film depicting a hedonistic, spoilt son who poses a threat to his father's political ambitions as a satirical swipe at Hunter Biden, and Fixer as the UK equivalent of 'My Son Hunter'. Although the fact that the first trailer for Fixer dropped in late 2019, suggests the production pre-dated both the laptop story and the Robert Davi film. It seems in that respect resemblance to real life characters really was coincidental, but that the filmmakers' crystal ball was only slightly off when it came to the father's political leanings. The Fixer is a cynical but hilariously foul mouthed political diatribe, with a troubling air of truth to it when it comes to the ruthless, dirty game that is politics. Don't go expecting an action fest- despite the duo's run ins with neo-nazi thugs and football hooligans- that's definitely not where this film's head is at. However Patrick Olliver is clearly having a ball playing Nigel Farage in all but name, and Phil Lyndon remarkably reinvents himself as a Statham esque tough guy with a undeniable talent for gutter level insults.
