Black Monday Magazine Review (Text)

Craig Perryman does it again in another fantastic performance playing John, an out of luck banker who looses his job due to the economical downturn. Joint directors Matthew Moran and Seiya Sakamoto use everything at their disposal to create a gritty real life portrayal of the current economical climate, in the same way Shane Meadows does with the skinhead culture in ‘This is England’.

The film shows John as ‘the everyman’ who goes to work like any other day, to receive the same fate of so many people. The problem here is that the film is simply too short to show such a big issue in depth. They try to by showing the character’s current lifestyle, then immediately showing his downfall allowing the audience to see a clear contrast. The issue I have with his is the speed in which it happens. It goes straight from him going to work, then him being made redundant, and then his downfall, which happens so fast that it’s simply too hard to take it all in.

The film takes place in London, in what seems to be the financial district. This seems to be adequate setting seeing that the financial district was the most affected. The sound on the other hand is a bit of a hit or miss. The film starts of with a sickeningly happy song, which goes on far too long in my opinion, to the point that it gets annoying. It also makes the character seem like the perfect human.

Talking about characters, I feel that the tramp (played by Kobina Addison) is a by far the best character. Many people in society look down on the homeless, and we can see a little of this in John. However at the end the tramp looks more human. From this we can see that it’s easy to go from well-to-do man to poverty-stricken vagrant. The film even flirts with the idea that what happened to John happened to the tramp.

I can appreciate the boss character, and the reason why the directors chose to hide his identity. He accompanies the idea that John is this everyman, so this mysterious character represents the banks and businesses that caused all the problems, as the common enemy.

The film in my opinion is very good. In such a small time frame, the directors try everything. The film doesn’t go into depth with the whole recession idea, but I’m sure they know that. What I really got from the film is how easy it is to go from having everything, to having nothing.