In spite of the fact that Alan Bates and Gary Oldman are great actors, they are completely upstaged by Liz Smith (the British character actress, not the new york-based gossip columnist) as Oldman's mother, who along with her husband (Max Wall), cakes in Oldman's dog when he is sent to prison. Bates and Oldman, one time lovers, have remained friends and when Bates goes to visit the dog, she learns that the dog is being mistreated by Wall, and often beaten. Smith, seemingly naive about the abuse, claims that all is well, but Bates and the dog manage to bond even though Wall goes out of his way too beat the dog with his stick when Bates is around.
It's depressing stuff, a return to the British kitchen sink dramas that Bates did in the 1960's, with some good visuals of the surrounding area of this working class neighborhood, but I didn't find the characters outside of Smith's dotty matron to be well-rounded or fully detailed, forcing the viewer to attempt to care about characters they know really nothing about. There are too many miscellaneous subplots that just slows the film down, and it becomes a very trying and ponderous drama where the relationship between man and dog doesn't really fully bond until later in the film. The beautiful German Shepherd is trained well, but it became rather disconcerting to hear the dog yelping in both pain and loneliness while Bates goes on and on about not getting any correspondence from Oldman. This definitely seems like a film that would have played better on BBC rather than be released in the theaters.
It's depressing stuff, a return to the British kitchen sink dramas that Bates did in the 1960's, with some good visuals of the surrounding area of this working class neighborhood, but I didn't find the characters outside of Smith's dotty matron to be well-rounded or fully detailed, forcing the viewer to attempt to care about characters they know really nothing about. There are too many miscellaneous subplots that just slows the film down, and it becomes a very trying and ponderous drama where the relationship between man and dog doesn't really fully bond until later in the film. The beautiful German Shepherd is trained well, but it became rather disconcerting to hear the dog yelping in both pain and loneliness while Bates goes on and on about not getting any correspondence from Oldman. This definitely seems like a film that would have played better on BBC rather than be released in the theaters.