The Actors
Another movie that kind of couldn’t fail – just stick Dylan Moran and Michael Caine in front of a camera for 90 minutes and most people would be happy I think. Here they play two actors (surprise surprise), one not quite as good as the other, who hatch a scheme to get money out of a debtor who never met their creditor. Moran plays the party owed under the direction of his super-precocious 9-year-old niece (“I was born ancient,” she tells him, to which he replies, “Don’t say things like that, it’s creepy!”). This of course sets off a chain reaction that requires Moran to fool even more people in a variety of guises to make The League of Gentlemen and Steve Coogan blush.
Moran is brilliant, truly proving himself beyond the stand-up and Bernard Black. Abigail Iversen, who plays the precocious niece, is simply astounding – why haven’t we heard more of her? She’s like a tiny Samantha Morton! Michael Caine’s role is mostly support, but he’s good as always, and there’s equally good support from Lena Headey and Michael Gambon, too. It’s mostly a farce but it has some really almost haunting little moments that bely the hand of Neil Jordan in its making (he wrote the story and produced).