HOW refreshing to see a film in which all the violent action takes place either very quickly or off-screen. Stormy Monday (Pearl, 9.30pm) proves that you can make an exciting crime thriller without resorting to the Jean-Claude Van Damme school of slow-motion thuggery.
Stormy Monday draws strength from this, and from the vivid evocation of its setting, the economically depressed northern English city of Newcastle.
The bad news about Stormy Monday is that it has weaknesses, notably some lethargic pacing, an implausible plot and a host of uninteresting characters.
Tommy Lee Jones is an American magnate-cum-gangster called Cosmo, who is launching an ambitious money-laundering scheme by buying up lots of real estate. One man refuses all of Cosmo's lucrative offers: Finney (Sting) the owner of a successful jazz club.
Caught up in this unlikely conflict are Kate (Melanie Griffith), an American who works for Cosmo as a call-girl, and Brendan (Sean Bean), a young jazz enthusiast. (Bean, by the way, narrates The Contenders, the British documentary series about successful athletes which airs on Friday evenings at 9.00pm on Pearl).
When Cosmo hires two thugs from London to persuade Finney to sell-up, he turns the tables and sends the chief assassin home with a broken arm. At which point, Cosmo decides to raise the stakes.
Stormy Monday was the feature debut from British film-maker and composer Mike Figgis. At times he handles the drama deftly, turning Newcastle into the greatest character in the film. It fails, ultimately, not because it is obscure, but because it is uninvolving. Tommy Lee Jones is entertaining, but Sting is his usual pseudo-serious self.
