Plea­sure Island

Mike Doxford’s Plea­sure Island epit­o­mis­es the increas­ing­ly preva­lent vision of disheveled, des­o­late British sea­side towns while offer­ing bleak insight into the mael­strom cor­rup­tion and poverty.

This sol­id thriller sees war vet­er­an Dean (Ian Sharp) return to his home­town, the apt­ly named Grims­by. He’s greet­ed with hos­til­i­ty and bit­ter­ness by his father, who’s infat­u­a­tion with pigeons is used to cov­er up ulte­ri­or motives. When he rekin­dles a rela­tion­ship with child­hood friend Jess (Gina Bramhill), Dean’s des­per­a­tion to offer her sal­va­tion, in time, becomes his fatal hamar­tia, and the pair’s unfor­tu­nate posi­tion is mere­ly per­pet­u­at­ed by his inter­ven­tion. Before the movie has prop­er­ly start­ed, we know how it will end.

The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is amply bold and sat­is­fy­ing­ly cap­tures the derelict demeanour of the land­scape, a demeanour that mir­rors the mor­bid­i­ty of the lives that walk its streets. The film’s most imag­i­na­tive visu­al moment can be found right at the begin­ning when a child (who we assume is the young ​‘hero’) is hap­pi­ly play­ing on the beach. The cam­era qui­et­ly fol­lows his mov­ing shad­ow over the undu­la­tions of the sand.

But sad­ly we’ve all seen the ​‘ex-sol­dier returns home to find things aren’t the way he left it’ sto­ry done a mil­lion times before. A slow build-up even­tu­al­ly gives way to a stan­dard action movie shoot-out finale, as Dean faces off against the final bad­die with guns a blaz­ing. It’s all so familiar.

Jess, mean­while, spends much of the film try­ing to escape from her pimp. Due to her mea­gre social/​economic/​personal sit­u­a­tion, she has found her­self entire­ly at his mer­cy as she works as a strip­per. Her plight is used as a cat­a­lyst to ignite Dean’s anger. You can’t help but feel instinc­tive­ly let down by her part in the film, there only to fuel the pas­sions of the male char­ac­ters. Indeed, all the female char­ac­ters in the film are ​’50s-style throw­backs; not only a strip­per, but a house­wife and a nan­ny. It’s lazy stuff.