44 inch chest

If nothing else ensures the memorability of 44 Inch Chest, it will be its world-record usage of the word "cunt". It romped home ahead of "fuck".

Many Londoners, not just Cockneys, who were raised on the wrong side of the tracks, or need to convince their world that they were, love the cunt as a noun, adjective, sound and symbol. It's crude and guttural, a worthy word to describe supposedly macho males' attitude towards women.

It's the film's dominant linguistic gift to the quintet of top-flight Brit movie actors who play a gang of ageing London mates. Four of them have gathered in a boarded-up house to provide solace for poor old Colin, whose wife has fallen in love and bed with another man. Worse yet, he's just a waiter and he's French. So they've grabbed him, popped him in a wardrobe, and are discussing Colin's shattered ego, the wife's sin and the lover's imminent murder.

The plot potential shines. This could have been an edge-of-the-seat study of murderous foul-mouthed oddball gangster types, a la Mamet, Pinter or Tarentino. Moments of black comedy suggest the two screenwriters may have been influenced by Joe Orton too. Sadly, their best model should have been their own nastily clever Sexy Beast.

Ben Kingsley's psychopathic gangster made that menacing movie unforgettable. That time around, Ray Winstone was the good-hearted Costa Brava retiree trying to pull wool over the eyes of an evil godfather in London (Ian McShane). This time, Winstone is the central figure of manic emotions and McShane is a smarmy macho homosexual. Alongside them, John Hurt channels the ghost of Wilfred Brambell's Steptoe father, chewing the scenery as a bigoted old-timer with ill-fitting dentures. Stephen Dillane snarls viperishly as another pal, and the assembly of stereotypical characters is completed by Tom Wilkinson, who cares for his mum and nurses Colin's rage.

Unfortunately, Colin isn't credible either as a mentally-disturbed grieving husband (suffering from an overdose of flashback scenes with Joanne Whalley) or as a presumed leading gang figure. His character fluctuates from apoplexy to tears, from simple-mindedness to semi-philosophical self-doubt. Bearded and hollow-eyed, Winstone does his best for a very talkative movie that should have been a stage play.

The lead roles, and a cameo for arch-scene-stealer Stephen Berkoff, provide a sound-and-fury pageant of melodramatic acting techniques. They may not signify much as a drama, social study or commentary on male chauvinism, but the actors, their accents, eye-rolling and cuntly cusses are fun to behold and be heard.