The Full Monte

The Full Monte is very funny and very human.

Gaz needs some dough to get visiting rights to his son? Dave is fat and impotent. Lomper is a suicidal security guard. Gerald has been unemployed for six months and hasn't told his wife. One is old but can move his feet. Another can't move much at all, but isn't called Horse for nothing. These fellows aren't your usual male strip review team.

Sometimes a good film is like a good book, and The Full Monte has that feel. There's a lot of pleasure to be had enjoying the laughs and the ideas that can be created in films such as these, and The Full Monte explores a wide range of emotional possibilities.

Set against the tensions felt by the creation of the long term unemployed in Northern England, The Full Monte has a savage, unsettling underbelly, which is overlaid by an exuberance of human spirit which is always not far away.

The men especially, in formerly vibrant steel towns like Sheffield, have had to struggle with their new identity in a society where it's often the women who get the full time jobs and become the breadwinners.

That these men might decide to strip for some money doesn't seem at all unlikely, and it's certainly not unlikely that the women in Sheffield, as depicted in The Full Monte would fork out their ten quid to have a good look and a good laugh.

The preparations for the show are often hilarious, with a po faced lad, Gaz's son, looking on in bemusement.

The wry, cutting, Northern England/Scottish humour made most famous by Trainspotting, come firmly to the fore.

Robert Carlyle who played the crazy Begby in Trainspotting plays Gaz in The Full Monte, leading a cast of lesser known actors from whom first time director Robert Cattaneo manages to coax engaging performances.

Carlyle is attracting a huge audience. As well as Begby he played the male lead in Ken Loach's Riff Raff, the priest's lover in Priest and the M.S. sufferer in the very sad Go Now. He's also Hamish Macbeth on T.V.

The lads do and say hateful things to one another at times but still The Full Monte is a feel good movie, even with its thoughtful, uneasy underlying themes. Above all, The Full Monte is about the development of self esteem.

What about fat Dave and his wife for example? We're continually told one way and another in the media that if you are fat, you are ugly and not lovable. Dave's wife loves him whether he's fat or not, and that's the sort of tenderness that makes the extremely funny The Full Monte so special.