Scotsman Review of Middletown (Feb 2007)

Middletown (15)

**
Running time: 89 minutes

RELIGIOUS fundamentalism is a blight on the soul of humanity. The sense of oppression, bigotry and hatred unleashed by tribal loyalties should be the stuff of great cinema. Peter Mullan showed how it could be done in The Magdalene Sisters. His film vividly evoked how the icy grip of the church led extraordinary injustices to go unchallenged and ignored. Nobody wants to rock the boat when a whole society colludes in setting the moral agenda.

Brian Kirk's thriller Middletown is more inclined towards lip-smacking melodrama as it pits a fire and brimstone preacher against the loose values and lost souls that now populate his childhood town. Kirk suggests that it belongs to a tradition of gothic chillers, citing The Night Of The Hunter as the prime example. Charles Laughton's only directorial venture had a poetic intensity and a chilling central performance from Robert Mitchum.

Middletown is defined by a growing swell of hysteria and a script by Daragh Carville that leaves the actors with nowhere to go but over the top.

The Oscar-nominated success of Pride And Prejudice should have placed Matthew Macfadyen within easy reach of some great film roles, but he seems to have shunned the lure of stardom for more offbeat projects. Middletown casts him as the prodigal son; a smalltown boy who returns from missionary work in Africa as a doctrinaire priest. Gabriel Hunter (Macfadyen) is appalled at the lax standards that have taken root under his predecessor. Cockfighting takes place at the local pub, alcohol is consumed on the Sabbath and the local residents are clearly heading for a fiery hell.

Gabriel's decision to unleash the wrath of God has personal consequences for his relationship with his father Bill (Gerard McSorley), younger brother Jim (Daniel Mays) and the latter's pregnant wife Caroline (Eva Birthistle).

A sadistic bully led into some appalling acts by the courage of his convictions, Gabriel is too much the villain to lend the film the moral dimension it seeks. Poring over his Bible, strangling chickens and preaching damnation, he becomes the kind of figure you expect to spend his spare time tearing the wings from flies. Macfadyen can do little to add some texture or shading to the character and is forced to rant and rave as he turns red in the face and cold in the heart. Talented co-stars such as Mays (Vera Drake) and Birthistle (Ae Fond Kiss) are also at the mercy of a very compressed script that leaves little room for either of them to flesh out the humanity of their characters.

Middletown is a commendable attempt to make a meaty morality tale but, like Gabriel, the filmmakers find the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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