Death In Brunswick

Contending with a kvetching invalid mother (Yvonne Lawley), Carl Fitzgerald (Sam Neill) ekes out a meager existence as cook in a dive of a dance club while pickling his inferiority complex in alcohol. In his new post as master of a roach-filled kitchen, Carl looks the other way when his helper Mustafa (Nico Lathouris) deals drugs on the sly. Carl quickly falls for a sympathetic barmaid Sophie (Zoe Carides) whom he begins dating. Although their May-December romance blossoms, Carl never behaves responsibly enough to fully win her over. When evil club enforcer Laurie (Boris Brkic) leads Mustafa to believe that Carl has informed on him, the chef kills the furious pusher in self-defense, disposing of the body in someone else's coffin at the cemetery. Mustafa's irate relatives threaten Carl, but he in turn implicates Laurie, who is summarily slain. Reconciling, Carl weds Sophie with the grudging approval of her strict, security-conscious family.

Despite an ingratiating turn by the enchanting Carides and complex thesping by Neill as the weak-willed murderer, DEATH IN BRUNSWICK is a trawling of the lower depths with a splintered identity. Although the monotony of the chef's tormented universe is naturalistically conveyed, his persecutors are cartoonish, unrealistic clay targets for spleen. One can't accuse the film of veering in tone because this (literal) kitchen-sink opus never finds a tone to begin with. Alternately, it's a love story, drunkard drama, crime thriller, cemetery caper, and mother-love satire without once signaling its audience how they should respond to the protagonist's stake in his collapsing world. Although Neill expressively fills in Carl's nooks and crannies the movie never capitalizes on that expert characterization or how he came to hit bottom. As a result, DEATH IN BRUNSWICK is one long, dismally dysfunctional mantra uttered from Carl's gutless soul; one can only surmise that the original novel found a narrative way to bring Carl's crises to a bitterly funny boil.

In the last reel, the script throws caution to the wind and plays an overblown wedding climax with ZORBA THE GREEK merriment because Carl still registers as a vacillating child-man. A film this bleak cannot shift gears without preparing us, either with clear growth in the hero's psychology or hints that earlier decrepitude, homicide, and grave desecration are meant to be taken lightly. DEATH IN BRUNSWICK never earns our leap of faith. This is no black comedy; it's a study in stasis that tries to bluff its way to a slaphappy conclusion. (Violence, extreme profanity, substance abuse, sexual situations, adult situations.) leave a comment