The film ‘The Live of the Saints’ seems to be a ill conceived attempt to make a contemporary London-based fairytale, but instead of holding anything close to cinematic magic, it’s vacuous script, pretentious tone and unfocused directing make it a painful thing to watch.

Set in North London ‘The Lives of the Saints’ is a gangland drama written by Toni Grisoni (Brothers of the Head) and co-directed by Rankin (Photographer and publisher of Dazed & Confused magazine). Mr Karva (James Kosmo doing a bad accent) a large and supposedly frightening gang boss, stomps around the screen trying his best to portray an edgy villain but coming off more like he’s just graduated from the ‘Guy Richie Charm School for the Chunkier Man’. Karva’s son Othello has designs on taking his fathers place, while hanger-on friend Emilio and girlfriend Tina watch from the sidelines. When one of Mr Karvas errand boys ‘Roadrunner’ stumbles across a grubby mute child in the park, everyone’s lives break from their set paths as the boys prophetic powers shift the balance of power in unseen ways.

I’m not sure when and where Toni Grisoni wrote ‘The Lives of the Saints’, but it seems odd that the obviously talented writer behind screenplays like ‘Brothers of the Head’ and ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ would turn out something so horribly trite and pretentious. The dialogue ranges from the bland to the excruciatingly painful and nonsensical, and It feels a lot like a bad urban adaptation of a Shakespearian tragedy that the ‘Hip’ teacher would play during an English lesson. The plot seems to be part religious allegory (Pandoras Box) part gangster drama with an occasional piece of off colour ‘comedy’ thrown in for no good reason.

The plot starts at an interesting pace but very quickly dwindles off and finds it very hard to gain any kind of momentum again. The plot wanders incoherently between the characters as their lives are effected by the central angelic figure of the young mute child, and never seems to care about setting up an engaging narrative. In itself the premise is fairly interesting but doesn’t delve any deeper than the shallow ‘be careful what you wish for’ philosophy and instead of evolving that thought, brings it to an inconsequential and obvious end. The film harbours some interesting actors like Emma Pierson and Daon Broni but severely under uses them and chooses instead to focus too much tiring shouty-acting from it’s leads.

Rankin (a portrait and fashion photography) is an odd choice to direct, but after watching the extras on the dvd it seems that the film is half vanity piece for him and half promotional piece for an Italian Denim company called ‘Meltin Pot’. Never has their been two better reasons to not make a film. Watching the ‘Making of’ on the dvd actually made me feel a little bit sick as they talk about the film as a product and how it’s a new and progressive marketing strategy for a brand to fund a film from the beginning.

I love British film and so I almost feel a little guilty bad mouthing one, but at the same time I would have rather seen the money they used to finance ‘The Lives of the Saints’ go towards a film that actually had some worth. Funding new films from people like Saul Dibb (Bullet Boy) or Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton) would have been a better way to distribute the money, rather than wasting it on a fashion photographers self-aware student film.

The DVD

The Dvd is well presented as is usual from Tartan, with a good 5.1 surround track and a nicely rounded DTS Digitial track. The extras include the aforementioned ‘making of’ and a theatrical trailer. If you enjoy the film then the short documentary does give some interesting insights into the production.

Technical Specs

* Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer
* Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 Audio
* DTS 5.1 Audio
* ‘Making of’ Featurette
* Theatrical Trailer

The Lives of the Saints is released on DVD on the 12th of March.