With violence on the menu, it's a guilty pleasure to watch these stage-trained hambones unleash a rapid-fire roundelay of righteous indignation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 25, 2010

The frequently profane dialogue suggests David Mamet on an off-night (so does Malcolm Venville's claustrophobia-inducing direction), though the first-rate cast works hard.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 11, 2010

It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 4, 2010

The whole thing feels like middle-period Mamet with English accents, and not much to say.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 4, 2010

Is this a documentary about a porn professional? Or a gym rat? Neither. It's a stagy, half-entertaining, half-tedious acting competition between five excellent Englishmen.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 4, 2010

I just felt like it was not going anywhere after a while and I did feel like I was trapped in a play that wasn't really working for me.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2010

All moody buildup and no -- I mean no -- real suspense.

| Jan 29, 2010

Think of 44 Inch Chest as a piece of chamber music and you can compensate for the thinness of its story and the lack of visual distinction.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 29, 2010

Even a great British cast and obscenity-laden gangland dialogue aren't enough to make what amounts to an extended acting exercise into much of a movie.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 29, 2010

It's sometimes difficult to discern whether the filmmakers are dissecting male bonding, ritualized aggression and sexual anxiety or celebrating it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 29, 2010

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 29, 2010

The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 28, 2010

If you value your I.Q., avoid a horror called 44 Inch Chest like V.D.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2010

This limp psychodrama proves woefully short on character development or narrative structure.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 25, 2010

A very strange, often terrible affair that is nevertheless mesmerizing, in a limited way.

| Jan 25, 2010

The effect is to clobber you with lines that were already clobbersome and needed no extra emphasis. It starts to feel less like a thriller than an actors' workshop.

| Jan 25, 2010

While not wholly unrealistic, it is so untenable as to put off all but the slightly sympathetic.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 22, 2010

There's a difference between exposing misogyny and crassly exploiting it.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 21, 2010

A great evening at the theatre, maybe. It has enough straight to-camera emotion and anecdote to provide clips for a wealth of acting awards nominations, but too rarely feels like a movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 15, 2010

Aiming for black comedy and a redemptive satire on self-deluding male machismo, ham fisted debut director Malcolm Venville instead gives his cast enough rope to hang themselves rather than the characters they play.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 15, 2010