Birmingham Evening Mail
The Worm Turns...
Adapted from Neil Cross's novel, Mr In-Between is a love triangle with a difference. Jon Bennet (Andrew Howard) is an ordinary bloke, except for the fact that he's been turned into a murderous monster by the Tattooed Man (David Calder).
Watching his domestic butchering at the beginning is a chilling reminder of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. But, when he comes across old friend turned new mum Cathy, the worm turns. Bennet is as light in voice as he is big in frame, so can he find love and keep his uncompromising master happy at the same time in this morality no man's land?
Cinematographer Paul Sarossy's 98-minute directorial debut is visually
powerful and unflinching. Unlike many films today, you won't forget this
one in a hurry.
Glasgow Sunday Herald
This stylish British flick is about a hitman (the striking Welsh actor
Andrew Howard) who discovers an alternative to his life of baroque cruelty
and lonely privilege when he bumps into a childhood friend. His feelings
are complicated by the fact that he rapidly falls in love with his friend's
wife. But his boss, the monstrous Tattooed Man (David Calder), is not
prepared to lose his employee to a life of normality. Closer to the
stylised cruelty of Performance than to the lairy tone of more recent
British gangster films, this is a bleak but powerful study of the nature of
evil.
Evening Standard - DVD of the week
A nastily effective Brit thriller that favours existential angst over joke thuggery in its tale of a glacial hitman Jon (Andrew Howard) and his rabidly eccentric employer (David Calder) - a tattooed sadist who is also a dab hand in the kitchen.
After a chance meeting with a former schoolfriend, Jon begins to question his life and career choices. A little heavy on the philosophising, Paul Sarossy's film is none the less a serious attempt to raise the stakes of a debased genre, and its atmosphere of curdled menace is sustained through to the horrific end.
Coventry Evening Telegraph
A hit man (Andrew Howard) suffers from a sense of 'inbetweenness' when he
meets two former school friends who are now married with a baby. Handsome
looking tale with a healthy dose of black humour.
The Guardian
Interesting London crime thriller, following a hitman with serious career
regrets. This dark and downbeat Brit gangster movie missed the boat, but
it's one of the better ones.
Independent on Sunday
Mr In-Between deserves to be a cult smash. It's a London gangster movie,
but, like Sexy Beast, it has a fantastical edge, a vein of pitch-black
comedy, and a philosophical cleverness unimagined by any Guy Ritchie copy.
The Mail on Sunday
For a new British gangster film, Mr In-Between is surprisingly good. It's a
dark, chilling tale about a lonely assassin (Andrew Howard) trying to escape
his life. He's controlled by an underworld boss called the Tattooed Man
(the terrifying David Calder) because, we eventually discover, he has a
skull stencilled on his torso every time he orders a hit.
The film marks the impressive directing debut of Canadian Paul Sarossy and is in the gritty tradition of The Long Good Friday and Get Carter rather than the vacuous larks of Snatch or Rancid Aluminium.
Ents24.com
An intense and sometimes sadistic British gangster film which is the
antithesis of the recent trend towards the 'Lock Stock' approach. Based on
the Neil Cross book of the same title, it's the study of a tortured
hit-man's brutal decline into self-destruction and full of unrestrained
violence. Andrew Howard is an exceptional lead, a man haunted by guilt about
the things he's done and in a doomed affair with an old friend's wife.
Shocking and distrubing, it may prove too intense (and the characters too
dislikeable) for many, but it's fresh approach to the genre should be
applauded.
Sunday Telegraph
Stocky, moody, a bit quiet: Jon (Andrew Howard) is a typical Lock Stock
henchman. His boss, David Calder (now playing in ITV's Family) is more
unusual. You can tell by the way he delivers the line "That is existential
cowardice of the most appalling kind!" and rips off his shirt to reveal
tattoos of the faces of all his previous victims. Since neither nipple is
visible, we can tell he's a prolific killer. Brutal, bleak, cheap and gory
it may be, but Paul Sarossy's adaptation of the Neil Cross thriller is never
boring - a rare thing for a Brit crim flick. And the coda, in which
everyone goes on a day trip to Eastbourne, is enchantingly weird.
Sunday Express
The low-budget British gangster movie Mr In-Between is no more pleasant
[than Bad Boys 2] - but at least it is not trying to be. It is, in fact,
genuinely disturbing and makes no attempt to glamorise the sick individuals
who kill for a living - underworld enforcer Jon (Andrew Howard) or kill just
for pleasure - a pretentious sadist known as the Tattooed Man (a head for
each victim decorates his body) played by David Calder. Director Paul
Sarossy, a renowned cinematographer, does sustain a menacing atmosphere.
Sunday Mirror
Bleak but stylish London underworld thriller about a hitman Jon (Andrew
Howard) who begins to have second thoughts about his lifestyle when he meets
up with childhood sweetheart Geraldine O'Rawe. David Calder as Jon's
perverted boss is genuinely chilling.
The Observer
Directed by Atom Egoyan's regular cameraman, Paul Sarossy, Mr In-Between is
a stylish British gangster movie in the psycho-philosophical tradition of
Performance and Croupier. Where in Performance the gangsters read Jorge Luis
Borges, in Mr In-Between a crime boss (sinister David Calder), living in a
satanic warehouse beneath an East End railway bridge, has given his prize
hit man books by Sartre, Kafka and Camus to study as a way of embracing his
chosen role.
When the killer starts to go soft by helping an unemployed school chum and his family, he's accused of 'existential cowardice of the most appalling kind'. The hero opines, typically, that the police 'think that gangland killings are a form of Social Darwinism', and engages in dialogues with a priest about salvation and forgiveness. As with Claudius in Hamlet, the words fly up, the thoughts remain below.
Metro
Those groaning from Brit gangster flick fatigue will find dark, violent Mr
In-Between a bracing cuppa. By day, introvert Jon (Andrew Howard) is
another fleck of Dalston dole jetsam, but by night, a Jag takes him away to
the decadent underworld of connoisseur existentialist, the Tatttoed Man
(David Calder). For Jon is an assassin, and the Tattooed Man his boss,
nemesis, mentor, maybe lover, and possibly even the Devil himself. When Jon
falls back in touch with an old school friend and his wife, he also falls
back in love with normal life. But what is reality to such a man? Canadian
director Paul Sarossy plays elegantly with themes of good and evil, making
this the best low-budget gem in ages.
BBCi Website
Breaking the monotonous deluge of Sarf London gangster flicks that have
followed in the wake of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", this
intelligent little thriller owes more to Franz Kafka and Jean-Paul Sartre
than Guy Ritchie.
Set in a surreal underworld of cockney gangsters, tattooed mob bosses and contract slayings, "Mr In-Between" is as engrossing as it is unexpected. Jon (Andrew Howard) is the hitman of the title, and while he may not look like much, his blond locks and youthful face hide years of experience - offing people in painfully effective ways.
Kept on a short leash by the 'Tattooed Man', a shadowy mob boss who feeds him a steady diet of heroin and philosophy books, he's caught in-between the real world and a drugged up, existential nightmare of his own making.
A chance meeting with an old school friend (Andrew Tiernan) shows him a mirror image of the normal existence he could have had. It's only then that Jon is forced to realise how much he's given up to spend his life in the shadows.
A cinematographer by trade, director Paul Sarossy imbues this unusual setup with some alluringly strange moments. He turns the grubby sets into an off-kilter realm of drab colours and strange camera angles, all overlaid with a soundtrack of white noise. It's an apt framework for a script packed with philosophical musings like: "You must revel in what you are. You do what you do by choice".
Commendably ambitious, but only occasionally successful in its attempt to revive a moribund genre, this works best as a story of one man's descent into hell.
Playing Mephistopheles to Jon's Faust, the Tattooed Man tempts his victim
into an existential trap laced with heroin, and in which the expression of
free will can only lead to disaster. With its bold expressionism, "Mr
In-Between" does the opposite for British cinema, giving it a much needed
shot in the arm.
Phase 9 Movie Site
MR IN-BETWEEN is a stylish, menacing thriller starring Andrew Howard as
professional hit man Jon. Set in Bermondsey and Hackney, London's seedy
underworld is run by smart, sadistic villains reminiscent of the nastiest
Dickensian characters. Known only as the OTatooed Man' (David Calder), Jon's
boss instructs his employee who's next on his hit list. In return Tatooed
Man keeps Jon in an apartment that wouldn't look out of place in Wallpaper
magazine, expensive suits and substances to numb the pain between hits. His
existence is that of Dostoevsky's Underground man - testing the limits of
just how far down you can stoop, and still be considered human.
The arrangement is disturbed when Jon runs into an old school friend Andy (Andrew Tiernan) who befriends him and introduces him to his wife Cathy (Geraldine O'Rawe), also an old schoolmate. The cool, and alienated Jon begins to soften as he finds out that there is life beyond his bizarre existence. When he makes a fatal error in one shooting, he realises that there maybe a way out of the life he's made for himself, but it could involve making a few painful sacrifices.
Andrew Howard gives his character a notable performance that is well played
throughout. The cinematography is outstanding and the soundtrack is an
interesting complement to the movie. If you like cruel thrillers - then
youšll enjoy MR IN-BETWEEN.
Daily Telegraph
To accentuate the positive: the directorial debut of Paul Sarossy, best
known as Atom Egoyan's cinematograher, is a distinctively imagined London
underworld melodrama that suggests what Croupier might have been like after
a rewrite by Clive Barker. Andrew Howard is haunted and haunting as Jon, a
contract killer torn between the depraved patronage of David Calder's
Tattooed Man and the ordinary suburban life of childhood pal Andrew Tiernan.
Snatches of dialogue from Blade Runner and much portentous talk of
existential cowardice ensue.
The Financial Times
The genre-defying Mr In- Between is aptly named: imagine getting Dostoevsky
to rescript The Long Good Friday and you are part of the way there. Jon
(Andrew Howard, excellent) is an assassin who enjoys a privileged
relationship with his controller, the Tattooed Man. They shoot drugs
together, decide on future victims and enjoy nothing so much as a chat on
the popular classics of existentialism.
Living as if in a moral vacuum proves handy while nailing people's head to
the wall, but a chance encounter with old school friends Andy (pathetic) and
Cathy (beguiling) gives Jon a sudden and not entirely desired connection
with the rest of the human race - whatever would Sartre have said? It sounds
absurd, and it is all very bleak, yet there is something to be said for this
tight, difficult thriller. If all violent crime is an act of bad faith,
should we just start reading different philosophers?
The Times
Another British gangster film, but rather than the thuggish muscle and
tedious laddishness of the Lock, Stock variety, this icily cruel drama has
more in common with Nic Roeg's stylised Performance.
This has much to do with David Calder's brilliant, nightmarish creation, the monstrous Tattooed Man. A Mephistophelean underworld figure, he controls the life of his most creative and highly prized hit man (Andrew Howard). And when he suspects that his employeešs loyalties are beginning to split between duty and the urge for a normal life and family, the Tattooed Manšs retribution is swift and deadly.
The director, Paul Sarossy, was previously a cinematographer for, among
others, the Canadian director Atom Egoyan. And it shows - therešs a stark
beauty to the film, but also a reverence for a striking image that
occasionally slows the pace to a crawl.
The Evening Standard
Paul Sarossy's bleak psychological thriller is a curious confection of
existential angst and adolescent psychobabble. Brilliantly filmed in London
by Sarossy (Atom Egoyan's cinematographer), it tells of a glacial
professional assassin who is caught between his twisted employer and his
childhood sweetheart, whom he meets again by chance, and precipitates
disastrous consequences for them all. A dark movie in every sense, it
recalls the doomy tones (if not the subject matter) of Mike Figgis's
criminally underrated New York-set Liebestraum and Andi Engel's Melancholia.
Freakily nasty.
The Scotsman
This is the old, old story about the hitman whose ability to pull the
trigger gets compromised by a new-found emotional attachment, but what
distinguishes this, the directorial debut of Atom Egoyan's regular
cinematographer Sarossy, is its attempt to set up a complete moral universe
within the limitations of a low budget: the criminal underground seems more
than ever like a purgatory, the White Cliffs of Dover recast as the end of
the world.
Jon (Howard), a hired gun with an fondness for reflective surfaces and
brutality, works for an eccentric London crime boss until a chance meeting
with an old school friend (Andrew Tiernan) shows the path not taken (job,
wife and child), and leads him to reconsider his life of crime. Howard gets
a dream role for fatalists, hiding his character's strange, half-formed
personality behind the snarling, punch-drunk face of a defeated boxer, and
Jon's bookshelf - Kafka, Camus, Dostoevsky - only confirms the sombre,
coldly philosophical tone of a film which thankfully refuses flashy gangster
posturing: its few jokes are thrown away, its ironies grim, and its scenes
of violence disconcertingly weird, with a shirtless, tattooed Calder jumping
around like a fairground barker. Not entirely convincing, but unusual and
distinctive.
