Downtime

Mr Nalluri may well have seen this film as his shoo in on the Hollywood big time, but his inability to direct actors (as opposed to "great action sequences") puts him in the queue behind all the other explosion-meisters (a beard, baseball cap and movie logo bomber jacket are also required for this 80's derivative member's club).

The film's rather flimsy premise - drug-fuelled thugs wreek havoc on the occupants of a Newcastle tower block - could be seen as a brave attempt to couple Loachian observation with the action movie genre, but it's simply a rather crass attempt to add gritty realism to a juvenile plot.

Paul McGann tries his best under the circumstances (as does Tom Georgeson), but the actors take second place in this film... The lift gets all the 'best' scenes.

'Downtime' was hailed as a calling card for one of Britain's exciting young directors. I think Mr Nalluri needs to get out more.

Downtime is not for anyone who is afraid of lifts. The claustrophobic atmosphere in this film is the best thing about it. In fact, I've used lifts all my life without giving them a second thought, but even I found myself taking the stairs for a month or two after watching this.

The story features an educated police negotiator and a foul-mouthed working class mother on the brink of suicide. They have virtually nothing in common, but one evening they find themselves trapped in an elevator. To complicate matters further, some troublesome kids start a fire in the same tower block which rapidly gets out of control.

There is an unconvincing love element to the story which makes parts of it hard to swallow. However, I was prepared to forgive the film for this unlikely plot development because as mentioned before the closed-in atmosphere is brilliantly captured. However, near the end the film does something truly unforgivable. For no reason at all, it suddenly brings in a half-hearted revenge subplot which belongs in another movie and uses it to end a film which has already reached a satisfying conclusion. The sheer stupidity of having a film set almost entirely in a lift suddenly switch location to a hospital room, with an angry father waving a rifle around, utterly undermines the good work that has gone before. Such a shame! Surely the two protagonists should have escaped from the lift and that should have been that.

Worth seeing, then, but it's best if you switch it off about ten minutes from the end.

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.

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.

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!