In my 2019 review for “Fisherman’s Friends,” James Purefoy’s entry in the Real-Life-Underdog-Brits-Overcoming-Adversity genre, I said “the movie’s feel-good underdog story mixed with messages of decency and loyalty make it as refreshing as a gust of sea air in our cynical times.”
The true story of a group of Cornish fishermen whose LP of sea shanties became the biggest selling traditional folk album of all time, struck a chord with audiences who overlooked the movie’s formulaic, clearly manipulative aspects to embrace the uplift the story provided.
The sequel, “Fisherman’s Friends: One and All,” now playing in theatres, aims to continue the good times, but suffers from the sophomore slump.
The story picks up in 2011 during the “buoy band’s” UK tour. The shows are doing well, but controversy is stirred when singer Leadville (Dave Johns) cracks wise to a female journalist, a remark that quickly puts their record company PR department on edge. Label head Jez Chandra (Ramon Tikaram) fears the comment will reflect badly on the company, and wants to drop the band. “Moby Dick and the Whalers are not on message,” he snorts.
Back in their Port Isaac homebase the Fisherman’s Friends are facing a crisis. Lead singer Jim (Purefoy) is not coping well with the death of his father and bandmate Jago (David Hayman). “When father died,” he says, “the band died with him.”
When the band decides to move on and find a replacement for Jago, Jim melts down and quits. On a downward spiral, he begins a romance with burned out Irish rock star Aubrey, played by real life Irish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Imelda May. Sober for three years, she helps him clear his head and put him and the Fishermen on the road to their biggest gig yet, the Glastonbury Festival, supporting Beyonce.
Fans of the first film may have a sense of déjà vu while watching “Fisherman’s Friends: One and All.” Once again it is a mixture of predictability, formula and sea shanties. No surprises there. No surprises anywhere, in fact. Like day-old fish, it’s a bit stale but for fans it’s not about wild plot twists, it’s about the underdog characters. Looked down on by an industry that doesn’t understand them, the chipper sailors persevere, creating a place for themselves in their town and even on the stage at one of the world’s largest rock festivals. That sense of community, the one for all and all for one spirit, is heartwarming and gives the film whatever power it has.
Mixed in with the inspiration, is a shipload of drama, including an exploration of loss and grief, which is blunted somewhat by frequent glimpses of Jago’s ghostly presence in the corner of Jim’s eye, some mild peril at an abandoned mine and yes, another impromptu public performance that becomes into a turning point in their career. It feels very “been there, done that,” like watching a rerun of a show you only half remember, but it is amiable, aiming for your heart, not your head, and in that, it succeeds.
Check out episode twenty-two of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office), we meet actor James Purefoy, direct from the south west of England, via Zoom. If you were a fan of HBO’s “Rome,” you know him as joyfully decadent Roman general and politician Mark Antony. Perhaps you were a fan of “The Following,” which saw him play a college professor-turned-serial-killer and cult leader for three seasons opposite Kevin Bacon. The versatile actor has a list of credits as long as my arm including the film he joins me to talk about today, “Fisherman’s Friends.” No, it’s not about the cough drops… it is a is a good-natured crowd pleaser about a real life singing group from Cornwall in England who went from singing at the local pub, when they weren’t on the water making a living, to producing the biggest selling traditional folk album of all time. Purefoy plays Jim, the leader of the group, who was initially skeptical about their chances for success outside their tiny village. When we did this interview he was sitting in his garden, and proudly showed me all the produce he’s been growing since the beginning of the pandemic. That also means that from time to time you’ll hear a bird chirping or a bit of wind… it’s not your speakers, it’s just nature on Purefoy’s property.
“I’ve become so inured and disappointed towards marketing people and advertising people,” he says in the interview, “what they’ve done to projects that I’ve been in where you go, “I can’t believe you even watched it, and yet you’ve come up with this poster. Do you know anything about this show?” So I think that one becomes a little cynical about that kind of thing and I think the answer to that is just to really be present between action and cut, and that that’s the thing. That’s the only really, really pure bit of job that I’m really interested in. That’s what I love doing. And the fame? Keep it. It really doesn’t bother me. If I can keep doing what I’m doing and not be vastly famous, then I’m really happy with that. That’s OK.”
Watch the whole thing HERE on YouTube or HERE on ctvnews.ca!
Another entry in the Real-Life-Underdog-Brits-Overcoming-Adversity genre of movies—think “The Full Monty,” “Calendar Girls” and more recently “Military Wives”—“Fisherman’s Friends,” now on VOD, is a good-natured crowd pleaser with some deep laughs but no major surprises.
Daniel Mays is Danny, a “proper bigshot” London music biz executive, on a quick weekend get-a-way with some mates in Port Isaac in Cornwall. They are fish out of water in the village. The locals poke fun at their city-slicker ways, treating them like outsiders. “We have our ways down here,” Jim (James Purefoy) warns Danny, “and once you cross the River Tamar you’re not in England anymore. We’re a land apart. You get my drift, son?”
After hearing a local group of fishermen, led by Jim, Jago (David Hayman) and Leadville (Dave Johns), singing a cappella sea shanties Danny’s pals jokingly convince him that he should sign the band to a record contract. He’s skeptical at first, but there’s something about the music that speaks to his soul. But first, he has to persuade the fishermen who are suspicious of his motives. “We have no need to sell our souls for fifteen minutes of fame,” Jim tells him.
His friends can’t believe he fell for the joke. “Do you really think we’d sign a boy band with the combined age of 643?”
But, convinced the public will want to see real people with real talent communicating 500 years of naval history, Danny perseveres. “In a world saturated with manufactured pop bands,” he says, “the fishermen are a real catch.” Plus, he’s fallen for life in the village and Jim’s daughter Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton).
The story of the band’s success is almost stranger than fiction. In real life The Fisherman’s Friends “buoy band” signed a contract with Island Records and their debut went on to become the biggest selling traditional folk album of all time. “Fisherman’s Friends” keeps the bones of the real story but amps up the big emotional moments. The highs soar and the lows have a heartfelt sentimentality. None of it quite feels like reality but by the time the end credits roll it’s clear that Port Isaac in Cornwall is a nice place to visit for 115 minutes.
“Fisherman’s Friends” is formulaic, clearly manipulative, and any sense of subtlety was clearly cut adrift around the second draft of the script but the story’s feel-good underdog story mixed with innate messages of decency and loyalty make it as refreshing as a gust of sea air in our cynical times. “We stick together down here,” Says Jago. “One and all. That’s the difference between sinking or swimming in a place like this.” A good message, even when delivered with a heavy hand.
Winston Churchill, two time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and, according to a 2002 poll, the Greatest Briton of all time, has been played on screens big and small by everyone from Orson Welles and John Houseman to John Cleese and Richard Burton. Recently John Lithgow was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance of the British Bulldog on “The Crown,” and now along comes Brian Cox as the great man in a not-so-great movie.
Set in the four day lead up to the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, France in June, 1944 “Churchill” presents a different take on the prime minister than we’ve seen before. Cox plays him as a sixty-nine-year-old man exhausted by the weight of power, terrified of repeating the mistakes made at the bloody World War I Battle of Gallipoli. A personal and professional downward spiral following discord with Generals Eisenhower (John Slattery) and Montgomery (Julian Wadham), is slowed by intervention from the PM’s wife, the strong willed Clementine Churchill (Miranda Richardson)
Feature films are not documentaries nor are they history lessons, but “Churchill’s” fast-and-loose relationship with the truth does not play well. While it is true that Churchill did have misgivings about the D-Day invasion the timeframe has been twisted for dramatic effect. Writer Godfrey Cheshire reports that writer and historian Alex von Tunzelmann “’telescoped’ the events of Churchill’s opposition, bringing them from months earlier to the days just before the invasion.” In an effort to link Churchill’s documented depression with one of the key events of WWII she goes nonlinear with history but fails to draw any real drama from her contrived version of events.
Cox grandstands throughout, perhaps in an effort to overcompensate for the cliché dialogue. “Sometimes you can’t lead everything from the front,” he bellows as though saying it louder amplifies its meaning. The gruff portrayal falls into caricature early on and has a hard time transcending into something compelling, let alone the psychological examination director Jonathan Teplitzky had in mind.
James Purefoy as King George VI and Richardson fare better but are bowled over by a script that suffers form a lack of subtlety.
“Churchill” is a beautiful looking movie, but it isn’t history or a portrait of a real person. Instead it is a misleading look at one of the most important eras in modern history.
“Equity,” a new thriller starring “Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn, bills itself as “the first female-driven Wall Street movie.” Certainly it doesn’t feel like male driven stories like “Wolf of Wall Street” or “The Big Short,” but its welcome point of view would have been better served by a stronger story.
Naomi Bishop (Gunn) lives in a world where multi million dollar deals are done over a meal of Tasmanian Sea Trout. She’s a top flight Wall Street investment banker trying to salvage her reputation after an IPO she steered failed miserably. Her bosses think she “rubs people the wrong way” but her skill in the boardroom places her at the forefront of a new IPO, a social media network called Cachet. “I’m going to take your company public,” she says to the company’s CEO (Samuel Roukin). “Are you ready to be a rock star?”
On the eve of their initial stock offering some ethical issues arise, placing Naomi at odds with her hedge funder boyfriend Michael Connor (James Purefoy), her ambitious assistant Erin Manning (Sarah Megan Thomas) and an old friend Samantha (Alysia Reiner) who also happens to be a state attorney with a speciality in securities fraud.
There’s a good story of financial intrigue buried deep in “Equity” but it gets lost in the languid pacing and by-the-book dialogue. The film, which gives a voice to female characters in a milieu where women are typically unseen and unheard, doesn’t do much with the opportunity. Gunn is formidable whether she is working the boardroom or berating an underling for bringing her a cookie with only three chocolate chips in it, but her motives are never clear. She is a bit of a caricature, a she-wolf of Wall Street who declares, “I like money” but never really lets us in under the hood.
“Equity’s” tale of power and trust lacks the flash and trash that made “Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Big Short” such romps. Instead it’s stoically straightforward, bogged down by procedure and a slight script.
Valorie Curry sits down with “Canada AM’s” Richard Crouse to talk about the hit CTV drama series ‘The Following,’ starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy.
