Review: The Low Down (2001)

This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

The Low Down

Rating

Director

Jamie Thraves

Screenplay

Jamie Thraves

Length

1h 36m

Starring

Aidan Gillen, Kate Ashfield, Dean Lennox Kelly, Tobias Menzies, Rupert Procter, Samantha Power, Deanna Smiles

MPAA Rating

Not Rated

Review

Relationships are delicate things and one wrong step can ruin them. “The Low Down” is an unusual film about a young man who finds himself in love with too many things at once.

Frank (Aidan Gillen) is an artistic young man who works as a designer of props for television game shows. Along with his pals, he has a lustful life filled with drinking, laughing and loving. One day, on a whim, he finds himself looking at new apartments, even though he doesn’t seem ready to move. There he meets Ruby (Kate Ashfield) a beautiful girl who brings him back to a point of desire after recently ending a long relationship.

Frank plays around with Ruby, but quite often arrives late for dates and eventually forgets to show at all. His lackadaisical approach leaves her rather disturbed, but still wanting more. It almost seems like she needs him more emotionally, than he needs her physically.

“The Low Down” is primarily Frank’s story, but we see much of his friends and roommate. Mike (Dean Lennox Kelly), John (Tobias Menzies) and Terry (Rupert Procter) are fine, upstanding ruffians who each have their own biases and each have their own problems. We never truly learn much about these gentlemen, they’re more or less two-dimensional foils for Frank’s free form lifestyle.

The film spends much of its time attempting to connect disjointed thoughts. Some scenes are thoroughly useless outside of exposition and even then they are quite unnecessary. He encounters two women who beg him for 15 quid each and neither appears or matters again. Even when he meets a man at the racquetball court and another in a bar who insists that he verbally degrade himself, we still can’t find a reasonable explanation.

“The Low Down” is a hapless film that tries to be more artistic than it really is. Each rambling idea cascades down a slope of incredibility. The film never stops or slows its use of extraneous information and even when the conclusion occurs, we’re still left wondering what the point really is.