44 Inch Chest (Malcolm Venville, 2009)

The title, as with the same scriptwriters' Sexy Beast, is presumably just to sucker unwary punters into the land of the geezer gangstah once more. Ray Winstone is the main lummox again, here crying his eyes out over being cuckolded whilst various gangland cohorts urge him to do the time-honoured thing by offing his wife's lover. It's extremely stagebound, bar the occasional flashback and fantasy interlude, with messieurs Hurt, McShane, Wilkinson and Dillane hovering around a static Winstone in an East End safe house, trading fs and cs like they were going out of fashion. The writers rely too heavily on the mere presence of such big guns in the same room being a guarantee of Reservoir Dogs-calibre wit, and any pretensions the film may have towards actually saying something revelatory about love, jealousy and relationships would be rather misguided. But Winstone does get to do earthy angst in at least one scene in his own inimitable way, so it's not a complete waste of time by any means.

6/10