The Limehouse Golem

‘The Limehouse Golem’ is a darkly entertaining little film that takes a perverse delight in monkeying with genre tropes and audience expectations. It starts out as a cop-and-killer/cat-and-mouse thriller, with jaded Scotland Yard detective John Kildare (Bill Nighy) – considered reputationally expendable by his superiors due to whispers about his sexuality – saddled with the sensationalist case of the title, a series of bloody murders that hark back to the Ratcliff Highway killings immortalised in Thomas de Quincey’s essay ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’. Throw in the Victorian London setting and we’re firmly in proto-Jack-the-Ripper territory.

Then director Juan Carlos Medina and writer Jane Goldman (adapting Peter Ackroyd’s novel) pull the rug as one of Kildare’s four suspects – failed playwright John Cree (Sam Reid) – is killed, ostensibly at the hands of his ill-treated wife, former musical hall star “Little” Lizzie (Olivia Cooke). The cases overlap. Lizzie’s trail becomes as sensational as the Golem murders. The prosecution case stacks up against her. It’s not long before she’s facing the gallows. Suddenly the film has become a courtroom drama with Kildare’s investigation ticking away in the background.

Then there’s another structural and (to a slightly lesser degree) tonal shift as Kildare, convinced that unveiling Cree posthumously as the Golem will both save Lizzie and benefit his career, visits Lizzie in prison and cajoles her into recounting her relationship with John, eager for any snippet of information that might help. We’re now in flashback territory and along for the ride in what could easily have been a trite rags-to-riches story except that Lizzie’s rise to fame is played out against a backdrop of greasepaint, illusion and backstage rivalry, the musical hall a cauldron of simmering tensions and blurred sexual identities. Lizzie’s erstwhile protector and mentor Dan Leno (Douglas Booth) is a female impersonator; Lizzie makes her music hall debut dressed as a boy. There’s a late-in-the-game bit of troilism where Lizzie’s arch-rival Aveline (Maria Valverde) assumes Lizzie’s “wifely duties” (to muddy the waters further, it’s heavily hinted that Aveline is bisexual). Even the troupe’s impresario (Eddie Marsan) – a man so avuncular that everyone calls him Uncle, for God’s sake! – has certain peccadilloes.

So we’re in sleazy potboiler territory. Only we’re not. I mentioned the de Quincey connection earlier, and ‘The Limehouse Golem’ has one eye at all times on the literary. Of course it does. The source material is by Peter Ackroyd, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature who has a Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards on his mantelpiece*. Which is why a fog-wreathed murder mystery with all the genre tickboxes well and truly checked – from the haunted copper at the end of his career to the third act race to the gallows – has walk on parts for Karl Marx (Henry Goodman), George Gissing (Morgan Watkins). Dan Leno was also an historical figure. There’s no small amount of delight to be had in seeing the grumpily pragmatic Kildare going up against them – one of the film’s niftiest conceits is playing each of the murders as if one or other of them is guilty of it, depending on whom Kildare is interviewing at the time.

But for all of its literary pretentions, ‘The Limehouse Golem’ is at its best as a treatise on theatricality. The swapping of identities, one individual playing many parts; the nature of hagiography, brutal violence restaged for crowd-pleasing thrills; the interchangeability of gender. But it also says much about the misplaced ethos of masculinity, specifically with regard to how three men in particular want to save or redeem Lizzie and various others just plain use her.

It’s fair to say that ‘The Limehouse Golem’ has a hell of a lot bubbling away during its brisk hour and three quarter running time. It could easily have been a mess – artless and disjointed – even in the hands of an experienced director. Which makes it something worth praising that it is only his second feature-length outing, following 2012’s ‘Painless’ – a film I now have every intention of seeking out. Medina is savvy enough to give the audience what they want – there’s plenty of blood and gore, the streets of London are depicted as appropriately dark and dangerous and seedy, brothels and opium dens abound, and everything is foggy or shadowy – and keep the procedural element of the film happily bouncing from clue to clue, doubling down on the genre beats even as he subverts them.

He’s also adept with actors. Granted, Nighy – who took the role after Alan Rickman stepped down owing to ill-health (he passed away soon after) – doesn’t need much prompting: the role of Kildare fits him like a glove. Mays, a perennially underrated actor, does sterling work and who’d have thought that a Bill Nighy/Daniel Mays double act would form the backbone of the film? Booth, Marsan and Valverde are pitch perfect, the latter taking a role that was basically written as Bitch Queen From Hell and emerging with a nuanced character. And then there’s Cooke, who graduates from a cluster of good performances in indie films and TV dramas in impressive style. ‘The Limehouse Golem’, through all of its shifts in structure and perspective, is finally Lizzie’s story and Olivia Cooke gives us a Lizzie who is unforgettable.



*I’m speaking figuratively here. I don’t know whether he keeps them on his mantelpiece or not. It’s not like I’ve ever been round his gaff.

Shifty

Low-budget drama ‘Shifty’ covers 24 hours in the life of a London-based drug pusher as family pressures, the reappearance of a friend from the past, the attentions of an off-the-handle client and the escalating threat of violence close in on him; and, as such, sounds exactly like the kind of Brit-grim urban crime genre that’s been done to death since Guy Ritchie staked his claim to the territory with ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ sixteen years ago.

But Eran Creevy’s assured debut is so much more than just dodgy geezers, dubious deals and eff-word-heavy dialogue (although, in the interests of accuracy, all three of these ingredients are present and correct). What it’s actually about is family, friendship, responsibility, regret, paths not taken, possibilities that remain, and the gossamer-like hope of redemption … or at the very least a new start. These are big themes for an 85-minute genre movie shot on a meagre £100,000 budget (kudos to Ed Wild’s cinematography and Erik Rehl’s production design for making it look like they spent ten times that much on it) and ‘Shifty’ could easily have been a sombre, plodding, po-faced piece of work. Creevy’s droll screenplay and confident directorial style, however, dispel all potential pitfalls, and what emerges is a very well nuanced, wryly observed and often very funny slice-of-life.

Shifty (Riz Ahmed) is the titular pusher, living with his devout Muslim brother Rez (Nitin Ganatra) after a falling-out with his parents. He’s well-educated (four A-levels), well-spoken and has the nous to conduct business within a specifically defined area and not upset the apple cart vis-à-vis his necessary relationship with Glen (Jason Flemyng), a player who operates in a higher tier of the criminal fraternity. Not that relationships between the major players are that fraternal, as Shifty discovers when he’s mugged and relieved of a significant chunk of Glen’s merchandise.

Self-employed building contractor Trevor (Jay Simpson) is Shifty’s least-favourite client – his favourite is crazy cat lady Valerie (Francesca Annis: terrific in a brief cast-against-type scene) – not least because he’s already run up a debt with Shifty while still badgering him for more crack. Trevor’s life is unwinding rapidly: he’s fired from a job for bringing drugs onto a building site, and his relationship with his wife Jasmine (Dannielle Brent) is reaching breaking point. Trevor sets himself on a trajectory that will ultimately be destructive for Shifty.

Into this increasingly pressurized environment comes Chris (Daniel Mays), Shifty’s best mate from back in the day who fled to Manchester years ago after a drug-related death he was implicated in. Chris’s return alerts Rez to his brother’s current activities, culminating in a confrontation that is low-key but effectively intense. Ahmed and Ganatra do excellent work here; both have real screen presence, with Ahmed vibing old-school movie star cool, and Ganatra possessed of a gravitas that allows for an appealingly minimalist acting style. Why both of them aren’t headlining major studio productions right now is a mystery.

In addition to great performances and quirky humour – “I can’t believe you’ve just sold crack to Miss Marple and struck a deal with Blazin’ Squad,” Chris remarks after their visit to Valerie ends with the unexpected cultivation of her wannabe urban rebel neighbour as a buyer – ‘Shifty’ benefits from Creevy’s decision to portray the kind of sinkhole estate familiar from everything from Ken Loach’s ‘Ladybird Ladybird’ to Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’ not as a place of abject poverty and squalor but as home to a vibrant and unique set of characters. Yes, there’s graffiti and claustrophobic underpasses, but there are also parks and greenery and a sense that the characters are comfortable with their environment rather than being oppressed by it. Almost as an extension of this aesthetic, Creevy keeps the violence minimal and doesn’t fetishize it.

Regarding the violence, I don’t want to give away too much about the finale in which Shifty and Chris wait out what would be a long dark night of the soul if they didn’t spend so much of it making each other laugh. Suffice it to say they’re expecting a visit from some heavy types, an encounter Shifty could easily have avoided simply by leaving town (Chris repeatedly implores him to decamp to Manchester) but doesn’t on account of the trouble it would bring down on his brother. Suffice it to say that ‘Shifty’ makes a sudden but beautifully subtle transition from urban crime flick to moralistic western, a pusher and his loser mate unexpectedly recast as heroic sheriff and slightly shambolic deputy awaiting the superior numbers of their antagonists. It’s at this point that the film really becomes something special, claiming more kinship with ‘High Noon’ or ‘Rio Bravo’ than ‘RocknRolla’ or ‘Essex Boys’. And Creevy still has one more neatly executed switcheroo up his sleeve.

It was five years between ‘Shifty’ and Creevy’s next project, ‘Welcome to the Punch’, which underperformed at the box office. Here’s hoping his next project, the chase thriller ‘Autobahn’ starring Nicholas Hoult, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley, finally gives him the breakout success he deserves.