TONY

TONY

(A.k.a. TONY LONDON SERIAL KILLER)

Tony (Peter Ferdinando) is an awkward loner who can't seem to fit in to the London life he lives in, no matter how hard he tries.

He approaches the man on the street, a market trader selling bootleg DVDs, and attempts to forge a conversation about films. It doesn't work, and so our stuttering protagonist moves on to a quiet pub where he falls foul of an oversized lout who clocks Tony's curious gaze while in the midst of rowing with his whining woman.

Eventually Tony retires to his flat to watch violent films on his small TV.

We think nothing of it. This stiff, moustachioed loser looks like a cast-off from some bad 1970s sitcom. He sounds like one too, coming on like a cross between Bex (Gary Oldman) in THE FIRM and Blakey from "On The Buses".

It's even easy to feel pity for Tony when young hoodlums curtail his attempts at calling for a prostitute in a public telephone box. Tony is so seemingly desperate, so simple, that he asks the youths if they're attempting to buy drugs - and if so, if he can have some too. The two lads take Tony with them to a nearby apartment and introduce him to poetry-spouting dealer Pecker.

Getting the heave-ho from Pecker, Tony and his two new buddies continue to while away the afternoon on the streets of London before settling in his humble flat. Tony wants to watch more violent films but the lads are more interested in smoking pot. They compromise: the TV goes on, the boys toke up and Tony grabs himself a beer.

Where is this heading? Is the bumbling, overly apologetic Tony about to get leathered in his own home? Not quite. Tony waits for the boys to flake out and then suffocates one while keeping the other in a state of stoned catatonia, sitting them down half-naked to watch dodgy action films with him. At one point he even recites lines from FIRST BLOOD to his hapless victims.

Tony, it transpires, is a most unassuming serial killer. He's able to move through London day and night unnoticed, picking up chosen ones at places like gay clubs, and later carving their bloodied remains into chunks that he can discreetly dispose of in the nearest river.

TONY seems to borrow heavily from the real-life story of mad Civil Servant Dennis Nilsen, who became one of Britain's most notorious serial killers by taking gay men back to his flat and butchering them, while maintaining a meek persona at work in the meantime. In this respect, the film also brought to mind Fhiona-Louise's equally sombre 1989 unofficial account of Nilsen's perversities, COLD LIGHT OF DAY.

Cringe-worthy job interviews and hopeless attempts at conversing with a sincere prostitute (Lucy Flack) further attempt, along with the opening scenes of Tony being mocked and abused by all and sundry, to elicit some sympathy for this introvert monster. But it's an old manipulative technique, one that we've seen being used many times before.

Once the initial "revelation" of Tony's true nature is exposed (hardy revelatory here, given that the DVD cover bears the sub-title "London Serial Killer"), the only people who are likely to be surprised by Tony's inner yearnings are the largely dubious characters he meets throughout the plotless film - most of whom, let's be fair, deserve to be murdered.

TONY isn't the sharpest film of the last decade, nor is it possessed with enough energy or pace to carry its 72-minute running time. It's slow in large passages - deliberately so, drumming up an air of melancholy and loneliness - and doesn't really go anywhere until it's last gasps.

But it gets by due to an agreeable feel of old TV films a'la Alan Clarke (don't get too excited by that tenuous comparison though), a great central performance from Ferdinando and the impact it has of having you walk away from it knowing you've just sat through something genuinely removed from everything else out there at present.

Despite it's shortcomings, that counts for a lot and as a result TONY comes mildly recommended.

It's best quality is it's authentic portrayal of a grimy, sleazy London that tourists don't get to witness.

The film is presented in a nice anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer. Colours are sometimes muted, which seems to be a stylistic intention of the filmmakers. Overall, colour, blacks and detail are strong and the image quality cannot be faulted.

English audio is provided in sturdy 2.0 and 5.1 mixes, with the option of well-written English subtitles. In a move that is unusual for Revolver Entertainment, they've also provided the option of an Audio Descriptive track.

Revolver's disc opens with a nice animated main menu page. From there you can access a 12-chapter static scene-selection menu.

Extras include two short films from Johnson: "Mug" and "Tony".

"Mug" is from 2004 and details a day in the life of a London mugger. Presented in non-anamorphic 1.78:1 colour, it's a raw and urgent piece of filmmaking that again reeks of authenticity. Shot on a council estate in a deliberately cold, ugly manner, the film is violent and powerful over the course of its 13 minutes. More than this though, it's actually threatening and even a little bit sad. Good stuff.

"Tony" is a 14-minute offering that serves essentially as a dress-rehearsal for the main feature. This one is anamorphically enhanced, and has a clearly better picture quality. It's not essential but it is interesting, and shows that Johnson had promise from the start.

The best extra though is a feature-length commentary track from Johnson ("have we started yet?"), Ferdinando and co-producer Dan McCulloch. The trio provide a solid, fluent and engaging track that perhaps doesn't delve as deeply as you'd wish, but offers an easy and agreeable listen anyway.

Revolver Entertainment have produced a good disc for this flawed but engrossing home-grown film that will no doubt acquire a cult following in it's own time.

Review by Stu Willis


 
Released by Revolver Entertainment
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
see main review
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