Is it a brave or foolish man who decides to rewrite Harold Pinter? It’s what writer – actor (and frequent director) Michael Head has done. Sort of. He’s taken Pinter’s stage play ‘The Dumb Waiter’ and reworked it as A Meeting across the River. It still has two hit men but no longer are they in a basement awaiting orders that are delivered to them via the dumb waiter of the title. The metaphor of the title object where they receive instructions from above is replaced by an Uber Eats scooter rider and sees the two hit men waiting in a car in an empty car park south of the river near what looks like the Dartford bridge. Eddie (Michael Head) and Bruce (Frank Harper who also directs) wait for their orders to arrive. Eddie ‘s the chippy little terrier to Bruce’s moody old dog and they shoot the breeze chatting about anything and everything.
That Tarantino trick of making small innocuous and meaningless topics essential listening sees the pair banter about TV show Countdown, biscuits, the undoubted ineptitude of Sadiq Khan, woke-ness, the appropriation of words like ‘sick’ to mean something else and even throw in a decent gag about Spurs and Arsenal all to fill the sheer boredom of waiting. It’s a difficult trick to pull off and, as many writers have found, it’s not easy making conversational minutiae interesting but Head’s ear for small talk is on point with the pair getting words wrong or simply mispronouncing them to comic effect. There’s something of Waiting for Godot about it as they kill time and like those two the pair here have an underlying power play going on, each taking turns to best the other.
Not only is making the dialogue entertaining no easy task but the confines of a solitary location make filming it in a visually interesting way is a challenge too and it mostly pulls it off with the use of occasional flashback scenes in other locations that include Bruce’s first hit which in themselves are nice little vignettes.
Harper and Head are a great on screen combo relishing their dialogue as they bicker and banter. It’s probably Harper who is probably best known for his hard men roles notably in Lock Stock and 2 smoking Barrels (and the only genuinely convincing heavy in the film. But Michael Head equals him having had a wave of films out over the past few years as actor or director or often both and his last film ‘Bermondsey Tales : Fall of the Roman Empire is well worth a look.
Though A Meeting across the River is clearly a low budget film its done well both in front and behind the camera and its short running time of 75 minutes makes this an easy and very enjoyable watch. Give it a go
related feature : Bermondsey Tales director Michael Head talks about the true life gangster tales & an all star cast
related feature : Terry Stone talks about his film ‘The Last Heist’ plus Trump masks & our audition for his next film
Here’s the trailer…..
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