Showing @ C Nova, Edinburgh until Mon 25 Aug @ 20:40
As we arrive back in Chicago, two decades after The Capone Trilogy‘s opening act, the mood is grim. The streets are running with blood and treachery, and there’s only one honest cop left. Too bad he’s engulfed in his own murderous grief.
Though taking The Revenger’s Tragedy as its template, film noir is the only noticeable influence in James Wilkes’ closing chapter. By its nature a cliched genre, noir can be difficult, and the script occasionally dips into parody. It’s lifted up by the talent of the cast, with Oliver Tilney’s Vindici providing a dangerous combination of anger, anguish and world-weary cynicism. He, and the rest, are more than a match for their material.
But if the beginning sometimes falters, the tautness of the final scene goes a long way to rectifying matters. The tension ratchets up, with implied torture proving far harder to watch than a straight-out shooting. A close-up view of the action means that stage effects are minimal. A flick of a light switch plunges us into temporary darkness; the appearance of a small set of pliers is chilling in its sparsity. The oppressive atmosphere of the Lexington hotel overwhelms us all in the end.