Jour­ney­man – first look review

As with its pugilist hero, Pad­dy Considine’s sec­ond fea­ture as writer and direc­tor is scrap­py, appeal­ing and wins the day not with a knock­out, but scrapes a vic­to­ry on points. Mid­dle-weight main­stay Mat­ty Bur­ton (Con­si­dine) is a father, hus­band and per­ma-grin­ning gent, a lit­tle at odds with the vul­gar and brash world of British box­ing. When oppo­nents resort to cru­el taunts as a way to whip up a sense of dra­ma, he demurs, allow­ing focus and old school sports­man­ship to win out the day.

Yet Jour­ney­man isn’t a box­ing movie. It isn’t even a sports movie. With a final bout under his belt and his life of domes­tic bliss neat­ly laid out ahead of him, one more unex­pect­ed (and giant) hur­dle reveals itself as Mat­ty returns to the fam­i­ly nest and col­laps­es, suf­fer­ing the bru­tal ini­tial effects of a seri­ous brain trauma.

For a while, the focus is split even­ly between the tragedy of Matty’s sud­den dis­ori­en­ta­tion and the efforts of his sto­ical wife Emma (Jodie Whit­tak­er), as she tends to both their baby daugh­ter and a hus­band who’s hav­ing to re-learn basic func­tions from naught. There can be no argu­ment that Con­si­dine is a world class actor, and he rel­ish­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty here to deliv­er a metic­u­lous and respect­ful por­trait of a man who los­es vital con­tact with body and mind that nev­er once looks like a mere tech­ni­cal exercise.

There’s a hint ear­ly on that, even though the film’s title refers to Mat­ty, it might in fact be telling Emma’s sto­ry, as some of the strongest mate­r­i­al involves observ­ing Whit­tak­er exud­ing a mater­nal kind­ness as she inter­nal­ly tan­gles with this harsh new real­i­ty. She knows that pin­ing for the Mat­ty she once knew would be to deny her love for the man she mar­ried – in sick­ness and in health. She believes that his con­di­tion is a mere blip, that reha­bil­i­ta­tion is an inevitabil­i­ty and nor­mal­cy will return. But Con­si­dine decides to present a dark­er side to Mat­ty, riff­ing on the idea that while he might be dam­aged up top, he’s still as strong as an ox. (Side note: some­one should real­ly cast him as Jekyll and Hyde)

Look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at the per­for­mances and the moment to moment inter­ac­tions between the actors, the film sparkles. The emo­tions are big and bold, and the tone always errs on the just right side of syrupy sen­ti­ment. Where it fal­ters is in its uncon­vinc­ing sto­ry­line, where Mat­ty and Emma are essen­tial­ly left alone direct­ly after the acci­dent with no appar­ent help or guid­ance on hand. Matty’s train­ing team scarp­er straight away, and their fear of hav­ing been com­plic­it in the acci­dent nev­er tru­ly rings true. It’s the con­trived sit­u­a­tions that pre­vent the film from real­ly soaring.

It also employs some fan­cy foot­work to retain a cor­dial rela­tion­ship with the world of box­ing. The chron­ic health risks posed by box­ing are neat­ly chalked up as a nec­es­sary evil, as Mat­ty stern­ly refus­es to blame his col­leagues and oppo­nents for his ail­ments. He doesn’t seem to mind that he has been tossed to the gut­ter and left entire­ly alone. But Con­si­dine doesn’t appear inter­est­ed in offer­ing a cri­tique of this world, instead focus­ing entire­ly on the dif­fi­cult recov­ery process. It feels like a bit of a cop out.

It’s a film which wears its sense of earnest­ness with pride, and even though it lacks for sur­prise in its arc, there’s a real sense of tac­tile human­ism at play. In many ways, this film feels like the mir­ror image of Considine’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, Tyran­nosaur, which empha­sis­es how open peo­ple are to inflict suf­fer­ing upon one anoth­er. Here, it’s about the dif­fi­cul­ty of help­ing those in need, and the bur­den of pro­tect­ing your own phys­i­cal and men­tal wellbeing.