JOURNEYMAN: A Treacly & Unengaging Disability Drama

Paddy Considine’s feature-length directorial debut, 2011’s Tyrannosaur, was a scathing and visceral take on self-destruction and finding the light within suffocating darkness. For his sophomoric effort, he maintains his fascination with redemption but trades grit for sugar, in a disability drama that’s unable to pry itself away from cloying sentimentality.

Considine also plays the lead, Matty Burton, a family man and grizzled veteran middleweight champion boxer, whose time in the ring is coming to an end. With a loving wife who grows wary of his safety (Jodie Whittaker), and a baby daughter to take care of, the upcoming match against a young, c*cksure opponent ominously nicknamed ‘The Future’ (Anthony Welsh) is to be his last.

A Different Kind Of Generic

And it is, though not in a way we would expect. Burton’s arc as a boxer who’s nearing his time tidily refutes any of its genre’s predecessors. There’s no underdog story: he triumphs, retains his title, and arrives home a hero to his family. The moment is short-lived, however: the fight has taken its toll, and Burton, following a pounding headache, collapses.

The brain trauma that has inflicted Burton is a welcome method of grounding his character in harsh reality, following the initial bland everyman archetype his role seemed mired in. And it’s also a welcome change of pace considering the film industry’s recent and increasingly derivative fixation on boxing movies (Creed, Southpaw, Jawbone). But in striving to escape one set of genre tropes, Journeyman wanders into an entirely new one, as Burton battles to overcome his trauma via a well-worn trajectory.

Now the underdog story really begins: with the ability to speak fluidly, process thoughts, remember his past – and, yes, get in the ring and fight – taken away from him, Burton is a sympathetic husk of his former self. His wife is strong and determined to support him, but this is tough going when Burton becomes increasingly enraged at his own incapabilities. Sequences of steel and peril hint that Considine has at least maintained remnants of Tyrannosaur’s tone – a smashed glass, or a missing daughter – but they’re obscured and diluted through a sappy smokescreen.

A scene involving Burton, a bridge, and a river is fatally misjudged, with hackneyed flashbacks used as lazy shortcuts to emotional connection. Accompanied by the thrums of a maudlin melody (its use consistent throughout Journeyman’s runtime), this is a blatant stew of manipulative devices; it’s difficult to determine whether he’s plummeted into water or treacle. And while Whittaker excels in her role as Burton’s wife – you can really empathise with her ongoing inward conflict – she’s relegated to bitpart as the film progresses and Burton’s boxing buddies (a much less interesting and rewarding subplot) enter the fray.

Considine does at least dot his narrative with a gaggle of insightful moments that tease a greater film. In one scene,‘The Future’ pays Burton a visit, laying bare his latent guilt and humanising him beyond his role as his rival’s antithesis. But dialogue is persistently on-the-nose; it’s difficult to empathise with the struggles of Burton when we’re continuously being told why we should.

Considine Can’t Convince

Perhaps Tyrannosaur’s biggest talking point is Considine himself. Not as director, in which his distant framing and minimalist style conveys competence if nothing else, but as Matty Burton, whose head injury instigates mannerisms and speech patterns that are difficult to get right – and in Considine’s case, noticeably so.

Burton’s infliction is no doubt well-researched and sensitively portrayed, but there’s an inescapable disparity between Considine’s performance and its intended effect. If anything, the vacant expression, nervous ticks and disjointed speech comes across too calculated, and thus not entirely honest.

Perhaps it would have been best casting a less recognisable face as the lead; though if it worked for, say, Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, then perhaps not. But Considine is clearly more comfortable in the ring than out of it, and his catatonic countenance can’t quite hide that fact.

It doesn’t help that Burton’s recovery is a series of repetitive screw-ups and communication breakdowns, ineffective in evoking his cyclical circumstances and much more effective in mustering up tedium. His slump would be harrowing if any of it wasn’t so darn predictable, but Journeyman refuses to deviate from its course.

Conclusion: Journeyman

A disappointing follow-up, then, to Tyrannosaur’s fresh whirlwind of emotion. Journeyman is the stale air that follows. It’s no generic boxing movie – thank God – but that makes the second path it takes, one steeped in sickly-sweet sensibilities and a stubbornness to inject subtext or narrative intrigue, all the more disappointing.

‘Journeyman’, in boxing lingo, refers to a competent fighter without the skills to become a true contender. It’s clear that Considine is referring not to Burton’s role as a boxer, but to his doubts over his status as family man. Ironically, ‘Journeyman’ is an apt summary of the film’s ambitions (or lack thereof): competently constructed and (over)reliable, but a far cry away from a film worth watching.

What did you think of Journeyman? Let us know in the comments below!

Journeyman was released in the UK on March 30th 2018. It has no US release date yet. For international release dates, click here.