James Cross
Passionless romance
There are no tears in this film. It’s probably the most passionless romantic movie I’ve ever seen. If David’s sapped emotional life and frankly stagnant approach to life was the point of the movie, then these were qualities well represented in the overall tone: boring, boring, boring.
A sordid experience of migration
The film opens with a clip in which a man explains, for the sake of newcomers to this island and apparently to civilisation, how to switch on a light. Yes, it’s very disturbing to watch this. But it’s also darkly humorous.
Marathon, dance, psychology and death
When the army team makes it to the very highest slopes of Everest, their bodies are beginning to shut down: the lack of oxygen causes their stomachs to stop digesting, their lungs begin to fill with fluid and their brains to go into meltdown (as the bravura male voiceover announces repeatedly).
Nothing straightforward about the English
The film was all about Combo. Shaun served as a device that allowed the audience to empathise with this man, who brings out all that is attractive in a marginalised, unhappy skinhead. Shaun finds in Combo a replacement father, Combo finds in Shaun a glimpse of himself at 12 years old.
