The World's End (2013)
It wasn't long after Edgar Wright's second film "Hot Fuzz" that he promised a third movie in what he dubbed "the Cornetto trilogy". All three parts of this trilogy feature completely different characters, completely different scenarios and even fall into completely different genres. However, they are also all star Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the principle roles, they make clear reference to films that have come before, including a reference to Cornetto ice cream at some point each time.
The trilogy doesn't really start with Wright's rom-zom-com (romantic comedy with zombies) "Shaun Of The Dead". It started with the tv series "Spaced". Many people seem to hold up "Shaun Of The Dead" as a masterpiece, but I've always seen a very clear progression in Edgar Wright's career. "Spaced" was a bit of a mixed bag, but it felt more established and consistent in the second series. Characters played by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson (now Jessica Hynes) teamed up to keep hold of a flat advertised for "professional couples only". A personal favourite episode for me features Jessica Hynes' character "Daisy" hoping to gain a job as a full time writer for a feminist magazine called "Flaps". :S
Edgar Wright's work is always wonderfully absurd and he does a great job of combining his flair for visuals with fantastic comic timing. Series two of Spaced featured an option on the DVD to have subtitles informing the viewer precisely what films are being referenced during the course of each episode. From scene to scene there'd be different film references, so in a way "Shaun of the Dead" was more limited in that it was only really referencing zombie movies and mostly George Romero ones at that. "Shaun Of The Dead" felt rather like an extra-extended special episode of "Spaced" with Simon Pegg's character feeling eerily similar to his tv series role (albeit with a job in an electronic goods shop rather than a comic shop and without the aspirations to be a comic artist). Nick Frost's character became more of a layabout rather than the uptight military enthusiast, but he still followed the same function of acting like an embarassment for Simon Pegg's character.
The result was, of course, an absolutely wonderful tribute to zombie films of the past and, as always with Edgar Wright's work, a shrine to all things geeky. So impressed was George Romero with this tribute that he had Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg appear as (barely recognisable) zombie extras in "Land Of The Dead".
"Hot Fuzz" began Edgar Wright's move into action. While "Shaun Of The Dead" featured Simon bashing his way through zombie hoards with some well-placed hits with a cricket bat, "Hot Fuzz" featured whole gun fights. And of course, Wright moved on to make a full action movie (once again chock full of geeky references) with his adaptation of "Scott Pilgrim Vs The World". This was Wright's attempt to break into Hollywood and, while I wouldn't rank it above "Hot Fuzz", I'd say that "Scott Pilgrim Vs The World" was still a dazzlingly beautiful and hilarious addition to Wright's backcatalogue and showed clear progression in Wright's talents as a director.
So now Wright wants to return to a style more akin to what he did with "Spaced", but now his geeky references have dated severely. How does he get around this? Why simply by making Simon Pegg's central character "Gary King" a loser who is stuck in his glory days of the early 90s. As such, Wright fills the movie with music from the 80s and 90s and makes similar references as we were used to seeing all the time in "Spaced".
Wright is also able to make use of the action-movie talents he began introducing in "Hot Fuzz" and further developed with "Scott Pilgrim" and, when the time is right, the results are quite incredible. "The World's End" features some utterly glorious action scenes, with full-on brawls excellently choreographed with multiple people fighting on either side and the camera shooting all over the place to capture the action at the best angle.
But some context first, as the film begins Gary King recounts his memories of leaving school and going on a wild pub crawl. He and four friends attempted what he refers to has "the golden mile", a route through 12 different pubs, drinking a pint of beer in each one. (One negative reviewer asked why a beer lover would ask for Fosters, not realising that by the time you are in the middle of a bar crawl the focus moves to trying to get through the beer quickly and efficiently before 'time' is called, rather than on the quality of each individual pint. *ahem*) The friends don't manage to complete the pub crawl successfully, but Gary King still remembers this as the best night of his life, because events in his life took a sour turn since then.
Gary decides to recruit his old friends through hook or by crook to accompany him on a retread of that same pub crawl back in their home town of Newton Haven that none of his old friends really want to go back to. The friends are still on good terms with one another, but none of them is really terribly keen on associating with Gary King, an irresponsible loser and basically an embarassment. It's impressive to see that for once Nick Frost is playing the responsible figure and Simon Pegg has taken over his role as the embarassing loser who needs saving. Frost is in fact playing an accomplished solicitor who has grown up and got a family and has an unstated grudge against Gary King that is not initially made explicit, but it is made very clear that nobody has more reason to be upset with Gary than him.
There's a good balance of attention given to the other three friends on the pub crawl, all of whom are played by awesome actors: Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman. Freeman is naturally pretty widely recognised now, especially since taking on the role of Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit" and the role of Watson in Stephen Moffat's "Sherlock" series. Eddie Marsan and Paddy Considine perhaps need a little more explanation. Considine is embarrassingly perhaps most well-known for his role as the Guardian journalist who cannot follow simple instructions and gets himself shot in a fairly early scene of "The Bourne Ultimatum". However, I know him best for his starring role in Shane Meadow's dark revenge film "Dead Man's Shoes" where he played an ex-soldier who takes revenge for harm done to his brother while he was abroad. He also plays a fairly scary figure in "My Summer Of Love", but more recently he put on quite an excellent comic performance in the movie "Submarine" and he was also in Wright's "Hot Fuzz" too. Paddy Considine has proven to have a wide ranging acting ability. The same goes for Marsan. He claims that in his role as a bad guy in the movie "Hancock" he was still channelling the rage from the method acting required of him when playing Scott in the movie "Happy-Go-Lucky". He has also played some pretty grim characters in Heartless (where he played the cynical otherworldly 'weapons man') and Tyrannosaur (where he played a brutal wife-beater). Still he has played nicer characters. He was Orson Welles' fairly unassuming producer in "Me and Orson Welles", he also very recently played an eccentric German doctor working in post-WWII England in "Best of Men".
The casting choices for "The World's End" are quite astounding. Not only are the five friends all amazing, but there are cameos galore from actors who have worked on previous Edgar Wright projects as well as a very amusing appearance from Pierce Brosnan (apparently because it seemed like the obvious next choice after the last James Bond actor Wright made use of: Timothy Dalton). Rosamund Pike is an excellent actress and I'm still waiting for her to appear in a film where she has a rather more central role. (As far as I can tell her biggest roles are in this movie, in "An Education" and as a Bond girl in "Die Another Day". But I think her best role is yet to come.)
The humour is darker in this film than in Wright's other films and it's mainly because of Simon Pegg's tragic character. Gary King acts like a complete arsehole, but in such a way that you cannot help but feel sorry for him. The humour lies not simply in what he says but in how other characters react to the way he constantly frustrates them. You're probably best off approaching this like a Coen Brothers movie and realise that sometimes you are supposed to laugh at the misfortunes of the characters. All of King's extroverted antics are a clear sign of his hopeless irresponsibility and his pathetic inability to move on with his life and to grow up. If King was just an irritating idiot he wouldn't be so funny. It's because you can pity him that he becomes so hilarious. As much as King wants to believe that he's a leader organising a fantastic evening for his friends, it's clear that he is below them, that his posturing is empty and that in the end he is at the mercy of his childhood friends who could easily simply walk out on him. Gary King is not a bully, he's not threatening and he is not even an equal to the other men on the pub crawl. He is an irritating child pretending to be a man and that is why he is hilarious.
I'll let you know that there's a sci-fi theme here akin to "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (replacing the "zombie" theme of "Shaun of the Dead" and the "police action/drama" theme of "Hot Fuzz") but that theme doesn't appear until quite a way into the film. When it actually arrived I was initially worried, since I'd been so enjoying the down-to-earth drama between the characters that I thought the bizarre new elements might detract from that. However, it's at this point that Wright gets to bring in some fantastic action scenes. "The World's End" is not just a brilliant comedy, but a brilliant action movie, with some pretty awesome special effects work too.
If you are wondering how this movie could possibly work, a good comparison is the movie "FAQ About Time Travel". Certainly "The World's End" is far better, but there's a similar sort of feel to the two of them because of their combination of a pub setting and a sci-fi premise.
Asides from the initial opening scene where Simon Pegg is recounting his previous pub crawl as a young man leaving school, I found myself laughing almost continuously through this movie. It really is very funny indeed. While I'm not sure whether the rest of the cinema audience were laughing too, I do remember noticing when I've been laughing more than other people in other films I've seen. In "A Serious Man" the audience clearly laughed a lot, but there were plenty of scenes where I was laughing while others in the audience were quiet. In "Seven Psychopaths" I didn't laugh out loud all that often, but it felt like the rest of the audience barely even laughed at all (though that was also a pretty small audience). Here I think it is fair to say that the whole audience was fully engaged and amused.
I don't think this view is very prominent amongst the other reviewers out there, but I don't care. For me, "The World's End" is Edgar Wright's best film so far. I laughed more, I was more engaged, the sentimental bits got to me more and the action elements were more exciting than ever. Everyone involved in this movie seems to be at the top of their game and I am so glad I decided to see this at the cinema.
A+