44 Inch Chest
Image Entertainment | Release Date: January 15, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
What enriches the recipe is that no one is quite as cagey as they seem. Colin is officially thuggish, but he's a blinkered romantic. Archie is a mama's boy, Meredith is gay, Mal is impotent, and Peanut wears dentures. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyMelissa Anderson
As in "Sexy Beast", Mellis and Scinto’s rhythmically aggressive dialogue becomes arialike. But first-time director Malcolm Venville lacks the visual flair of Sexy Beast’s Jonathan Glazer -- a deficit that, combined with 44 Inch Chest’s wobbly final act, comes dangerously close to erasing the film’s uninhibited look at the measure of a man. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
The best reason to see 44 Inch Chest is simply to behold some of the finest actors working today, especially Winstone -- who can embody winsomeness and menace in one sweaty, unkempt glance -- and the woefully underemployed Dillane. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
It’s a stagy, half-entertaining, half-tedious acting competition between five excellent Englishmen. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid Denby
A very strange, often terrible affair that is nevertheless mesmerizing, in a limited way. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
The film's action takes place mainly in one room, with the five characters posturing like angry macho men but slowly revealing their arrested development and juvenile ignorance of life in general and women in particular. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesAndy Klein
Structurally, 44 Inch Chest resembles "Reservoir Dogs"; but, without the added amusement of Tarantino's skewing of narrative time, it feels very much more like a direct adaptation of a stage play (which apparently it's not). The filmmakers do goose things up by playing with reality in the second half, but it all leads to a payoff that, while perfectly legitimate, feels limp. Read full review
50
NPRElla Taylor
Mostly, though, 44 Inch Chest is complacently in love with the rhythmically profane talk that came so easily to writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto in "Sexy Beast." Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
It starts to feel less like a thriller than an actors’ workshop. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Think of 44 Inch Chest as a piece of chamber music and you can compensate for the thinness of its story and the lack of visual distinction. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
Even a great British cast and obscenity-laden gangland dialogue aren't enough to make what amounts to an extended acting exercise into much of a movie. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter Addiego
It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Ultimately, 44 Inch Chest has very little on its mind. Read full review
40
EmpireKim Newman
44 Inch Chest gets by on the quality of its performances. Read full review
40
VarietyLeslie Felperin
On the debit side, and it's a doozy, the picture's narrative trajectory fails to deliver a third act that takes the story anywhere of note except into a silly realm of cut-rate surrealism. Final reel ends not with the expected bang but with an almost inaudible whimper. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith Uhlich
The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness. Read full review
40
SlateDana Stevens
Ultimately, though, even the company of these brilliant actors can't compensate for the limp, shapeless plot. With nowhere to go dramatically, the last third dissolves into a haze of flashbacks and fantasy sequences. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter Travers
There's a difference between exposing misogyny and crassly exploiting it. Read full review
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