Journeyman | Little White Lies

Jour­ney­man

29 Mar 2018 / Released: 30 Mar 2018

Man in red top amid bright lighting
Man in red top amid bright lighting
4

Anticipation.

Paddy Considine’s long-awaited follow-up to 2010’s Tyrannosaur.

3

Enjoyment.

A heartfelt tale of physical recovery, but the boxing element feels entirely superficial.

3

In Retrospect.

The great performances don’t quite make up for the functional storyline.

Pad­dy Con­si­dine writes, directs and stars in this hard-hit­ting dra­ma about a box­er who’s dealt an unex­pect­ed blow.

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 through on points. Mid­dle-weight main­stay Mat­ty Bur­ton (Con­si­dine) is a father, hus­band and per­ma-grin­ning gent – a lit­tle at odds with the know­ing­ly vul­gar world of British box­ing. When oppo­nents resort to cru­el taunts as a way to whip up a sense of dra­ma, he demurs, allow­ing laser focus and old school sports­man­ship to win out.

Yet Jour­ney­man isn’t a box­ing movie. It isn’t even a sports movie. With a final bout under his belt and a 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 zero. 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.

A boxer seated in a boxing ring being attended to by coaches and officials.

There’s a hint ear­ly on that, even though the film’s title refers to Mat­ty, the film 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, phys­i­cal­ly he’s still as strong as an ox.

Look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at the per­for­mances and the moment-to-moment inter­ac­tions between 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, and their fear of hav­ing been com­plic­it in the acci­dent nev­er rings true. It’s the series of con­trived sit­u­a­tions that pre­vent the film from 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 either col­leagues or 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. On that front, it feels like a bit of a cop out.

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