# Love, Honour and Obey (2000)

### reviewed by
Ian Waldron-Mantgani

     Love, Honour and Obey      1/2

Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by UIP on April 7, 2000; certificate 18; 98 minutes; country of origin UK; aspect ratio 1.85:1

Directed by Dominic Anciano, Ray Burdis; produced by Dominic Anciano, Ray Burdis. Written by Dominic Anciano, Ray Burdis. Photographed by John Ward; edited by Rachel Meyrick.

    CAST.....
    Sadie Frost..... Sadie
    Ray Winstone..... Ray
    Jonny Lee Miller..... Jonny Lee
    Jude Law..... Jude
    Sean Pertwee..... Sean
    Kathy Burke..... Kathy
    Denise Van Outen..... Denise
    Rhys Ifans..... Matthew

The main actors in "Love, Honour and Obey" are making a serious gangster flick, the supporting performers are trying goofy comedy, and the filmmakers are wasting celluloid. This is a seriously confused movie which switches uneasily from lame gags to out-of-context drama, and mixes in a series of karaoke numbers and a dead man in a clown outfit telling a story that has nothing to do with the images onscreen. Confusing? You betcha.

The first person we meet is Sadie (Sadie Frost), a soap opera actress who is engaged to a leading London gangster, Ray (Ray Winstone). The outlaw's nephew is a flashy geezer named Jude (Jude Law), whose best pal Jon (Jonny Lee Miller) is just about to enter the crime business himself. This gang's two main henchmen are Dominic (Dominic Anciano) and Ray (Ray Burdis). Rivals include Sean (Sean Pertwee) and Matthew (Rhys Ifans).

You will have noticed that most of the characters are named for the actors. In last year's best film, "The Blair Witch Project", this tactic helped keep up the pretence that the story was true. Here it's just a gimmick -- one that Anciano and Burdis (who wrote, produced and directed) also used in "Final Cut", a film I have not yet seen but am told is abysmal. Perhaps the intention is to boast that the movie has been made by a team, who are so close that everyone's role is tailor-made. If so, I'm at a loss to understand why talented thesps are so happy to be working with incompetent hacks.

This is a picture devoid of story or tone. It opens by focusing on the relationship between Ray, Jude and Jon, which we suspect will disintegrate into a violent mess, because of the elegiac tones and past tense of Jon's narration. But this is never allowed to develop -- every time a scene is set up with these characters, the film cuts away to some odd subplot, like the one with Dominic and Ray talking about their sex lives. Ray is suffering from impotence; Dom is giving him lectures on kinky toys that should relight his fire.

These silly comic asides aim pretty low; they expect us to titter at rude words and guffaw when a woman uses a cucumber to imitate fellatio. The potentially good performances of Winstone, Law and Miller, who take things seriously, are ruined by these stupid interruptions. Anciano and Burdis act them with such forced emphasis and lack of spontaneity that it's embarrassingly obvious they're reciting memorised passages.

"Love, Honour and Obey" sounds like it was recorded with an old camcorder microphone, and the editor uses flashes of lightning and abrupt fade-outs to move between scenes. Crude production values, though, are hardly the principal problem, because slicker ones would not have smoothed over the film's jumpy shifts from humour to menace. We see participants in a vicious gunfight suddenly begin a laughing fit. A man writhing in pain from a stab wound while everyone around him takes it as a joke. Two messengers getting stripped and tortured by guys who then feed them dog food. Ho ho ho ho ho. At one point I asked my companion if we were watching a comedy or drama. "I don't know," she said, "but I hate it either way."

COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani Please visit, and encourage others to visit, the UK Critic's website, which is located at http://members.aol.com/ukcritic

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