Circus - Collector's Edition

It’s fair to say that Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels did its bit to revitalise the British film industry in commercial terms, bringing about the return to fashionability of the crime caper movie in the process. But the downside is that since that film’s success, a glut of crime-a-like movies have appeared from the UK hoping to cash in on the genre’s new-found popularity.

The debut script for video shop clerk turned screenwriter David Logan, Circus wears its author’s fascination with the likes of Quentin Tarantino proudly on its sleeve, borrowing freely from a whole catalogue of genre movies as though Logan had decided to pay tribute to an entire shelf of his video library. Nothing wrong with that in principle, of course, but Logan’s obvious fondness for plot twists is on display here in ludicrous proportions. Now, caper movies loaded with plot twists - done right - can be enormous fun for the viewer. It’s important, though, to make sure of a couple of things. Firstly, the audience must be kept informed of what the hell’s going on. Secondly, the audience needs to have a character or two that they actually care about. Circus misses the mark on both counts, its twisting and turning plot so bizarrely convoluted it defies description. And ironically, the way it’s all going to end is blindingly obvious from the early stages of the film, completely negating the various elements of surprise attempted throughout.

The story? Incoherent, to say the least. Circus is basically the tale of con man Leo Garfield (John Hannah) and his wife Lily (Famke Janssen, who appears to be trying to impersonate Margot Kidder in Superman!) hoping to escape their admittedly luxurious but ultimately dishonest lifestyle by attempting one last, ambitious scam. Along the way there’s murders, double and triple crosses, bizarre hit men (including an hilarious pop-song-quoting thug played with gusto by the marvellous Eddie Izzard), an angry released American bank robber and the inevitable mob-like “boss� and his sidekicks. As the plot unravels, the viewer’s level of “whaaaat?� goes through the roof, and some obviously brutal editing that completely changes the motivations of a key character doesn’t help.

Intended to be sharp, witty and thrilling, Circus manages only to be derivative and jumbled, and no amount of hip techno background music can change that. At a mere 92 minutes, Circus is something of an ordeal to get through, not helped at all by the fact that every single character in the film is the type of person you’d like to see die a painful, slow cinematic death. The jump-cut editing and mercilessly close-up photography only serves to increase the annoyance factor, which almost certainly wasn’t the intention. And ultimately, any film where the director knows the plot better than the audience - and doesn’t feel like letting us in on the joke - is doomed from the outset.

The video, at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and 16:9 enhanced, looks reasonably good, but isn’t up to the usual standard of Sony’s transfers (indeed, it would appear that they weren’t responsible for either this disc or the transfer, though Amanda Donohoe’s filmography including Dark Obsession instead of its UK title Diamond Skulls implies that this disc is US-mastered). The image is clear and sharp (perhaps a little too sharp) and well saturated, but contrast levels become a problem in many indoor scenes, despite the use of bright, vibrant colours. The cinematography is surprisingly uninspired for such a chaotic, stylised film, very much in the style of a TV show (director Rob Walker’s background, incidentally, is in television). No problems, though, with the MPEG encoding on the disc, though the bitrate is quite low and there’s over 2.5GB of unused space on the dual-layered DVD.

The sound, in Dolby Digital 5.1, is crisp and efficient, though there’s little here in the way of audio excitement. Dialogue is always clear and audible, and everything else sits where it should in this dialogue-heavy mix. The main problem is that the audio on this disc is mastered at an astonishingly low level, peaking some 9dB below maximum and requiring a hefty volume boost on your amplifier during playback.

A Collector’s Edition for a film that hardly anyone has heard of and even fewer actually liked? Ah, the joys of DVD! The disc opens with Columbia Tristar’s new DVD trailer, followed, unusually, by a Dolby Digital trailer (“Train�) before the menu appears. Annoyingly, these are not skippable. The animated menus (including full-motion scene selection screens) are extremely well done and in keeping with the look and feel of the film.

Audio Commentary - Producer James Gibb, writer David Logan: First surprise is that there’s no sign of director Rob Walker on the commentary track, the comments by Gibb and Logan about the ever-changing structure of the film leaving the viewer suspecting that Walker was less than thrilled with the final cut of his movie. The pair talk enthusiastically throughout, and have plenty to say - Logan’s enthusiasm is so great that he occasionally resorts to describing the film as “his� movie. Ultimately, though, a commentary is only interesting if you’re interested in the film in the first place, so this one proved something of an ordeal for this reviewer.

Featurette: The usual six minutes of how this is the greatest film ever made, and that everyone who worked on it is a genius. Its brevity is its greatest asset.

Soundbites: 20 minutes of raw interview snippets (33 of them all up), each preceded by a “slate� detailing who’s speaking, what they’re speaking about and how long they’re going to speak for. This is the raw material given to TV networks so they can illustrate their story on the film. While including it here unaltered seems lazy, this is actually a welcome inclusion - there’s a lot more information here than there is in the featurette, even if it is a bit dry in its presentation. All the individual interview snippets are chaptered, which is a Good Thing.

Theatrical Trailer: A tightly edited trailer that makes the film look s like ten times the fun it actually is.

Deleted Scenes: Listed on the back cover as “25 minutes of never-before-seen deleted scenes�, this actually runs for 11 and a half minutes and comprises some unused scenes and some extended ones; certainly the inclusion of most of these in the final cut would have greatly helped flesh out the characters in the film, as well as explaining one or two puzzling plot points. Letterboxed but not 16:9 enhanced, all the clips here have two timecode displays at the bottom of the film image, and the individual scenes are chaptered.

B-Roll: Nearly eight minutes of raw on-set video footage, intended, once again, for use by TV stations and presented here unedited. While many dislike the inclusion of b-rolls, they do offer an intriguing and mercifully hype-free look at the actual shooting of the film, and this one’s a welcome inclusion.

Filmographies: Comprehensive lists of the work of the director and four of the principal actors, with no bio material included.

A well-intentioned but misfired attempt at creating a no-holds-barred crime caper flick, Circus is simply too muddled and half-baked to work on any of the many levels it attempts to explore. Fans of John Hannah will doubtless enjoy his likeable-enough portrayal of Leo here, but that’s one of the only bright spots in a film that, ultimately, never understands how to click with its audience.