Watching Monochrome, I came to feel sorry for one of its actors. Patrice Naiambana plays Randall Grey, an operative of the FBI-like British Crime Agency. I nicknamed his character ‘Doctor Exposition’ because he wears a long multicoloured scarf like Tom Baker in Doctor Who and is used throughout the film as a human info dump, regularly turning up to tell us what is going on, how it’s affecting everyone and what might happen next.
His appearances start off annoyingly wooden but, through repetition, become ever more hilarious. By the end of the film, he is practically a one-man drinking game. Take a shot every time Grey gives us an update on the case! Down a spirit whenever he mentions the BCA’s top brass! Chug a pint when he draws attention to the precariousness of the entire operation!
Unfortunately, clumsy storytelling is something that characterises Monochrome virtually all the way through. And even when one powerfully executed sequence and a passable twist arrive towards the end, it’s very much a case of too little, too late.
‘Countryside Killer’
Writer/director Thomas Lawes introduces us to the newly-formed BCA as they arrest Brendan Kelly (Steve Jackson), a banker who has seemingly defrauded a pension fund of £700 million. His younger girlfriend – Emma Rose (Jo Woodc*ck) – runs from the police and soon finds herself a job with a wealthy artist (Game Of Thrones’ James Cosmo, who gives comfortably the best performance here). He cottons on to who she is and blackmails her into becoming little more than his indentured servant. She kills him and, seeming to get a taste for it, starts inveigling her way into the lives of other rich people, then bumping them off too.
As the bodies pile up, Emma is dubbed the ‘Countryside Killer’ in the media, but in hot pursuit is Gabriel Lenard (Cosmo Jarvis), the BCA’s newest recruit. He has synaesthesia – at one point ‘hearing’ a painting as well as seeing it – but also appears to be on the autistic spectrum, although this isn’t made explicit.
The premise reminded me of one of those US network TV shows, in which a cop with a personality quirk/unusual skill set proves brilliantly effective at solving crime. Think Psych, Monk, and Medium. The good thing about US network TV shows, though, is that each episode only lasts around 40 minutes – Monochrome goes on for the best part of two hours and pacey it certainly isn’t.
Murderous Rampage
The film – which was made in 2016, but has only just reached the US – might have been better if its lead characters were more engaging. But Woodc*ck’s Emma spends the entire film scowling, pausing from her glum reverie every so often only to tell us that she “hates money”.
I think we’re meant to take her murderous rampage as some sort of anti-capitalist statement, although the fact she’s recently been the girlfriend of a filthy-rich London banker ensures her conversion to the anarchist cause is not entirely convincing. We are given no sense of the intensity of her relationship with fraudster Kelly either, so it’s difficult to understand precisely why his venal behaviour might have driven her over the edge.
Even less interesting is Lenard, who Lawes fails to give any personality whatsoever. He’s brave and decent, yes, but spends most of his time here mumbling and looking awkward. The assumption is that he has Asperger’s but, having introduced the possibility, Lawes seems unwilling or unable to explore it. Lenard’s synaesthesia supposedly helps him solve the case, but I didn’t really get that either.
As his hunt for Emma intensifies, he has a couple of lucky hunches and does a bit of laborious, par-for-the-course police work, exactly like they do in every other cop show or movie of the last umpteen years. Jarvis was brilliant in last year’s excoriating Lady Macbeth, but this simply isn’t in the same league.
Screamingly Obvious
Lenard is involved in one of Monochrome‘s most unintentionally hilarious moments when he interviews Emma’s father and the older man asks him what might become of his daughter. “I don’t know,” the BCA agent replies, deadpan. “I suppose it depends on who finds her first – me or the firearms unit.” He says this TO HER DAD.
Elsewhere, Lawes’ script is very on the nose and almost devoid of humour – everything that comes out of these characters’ mouths feels, well, scripted. People say things like: “Life is about risk and reward – you can’t assume the worst all the time”, and even more egregiously: “Who hates money? I love it – the more the better, especially if you don’t have to work for it”.
Lawes’ score (yes, he did that too) really doesn’t help matters. We get ‘sad music’ for the emotional scenes and ‘action music’ for the livelier moments, like he’s just playing tracks from an album, entitled ‘Now That’s What I Call Screamingly Obvious Movie Soundtrack Music Volume 1’.
Properly Chilling
Monochrome does improve somewhat towards the end. There’s a satisfying twist two-thirds of the way through involving another BCA agent (played with glowering menace by Jack The Giant Slayer star Lee Boardman), and a pleasingly deranged sequence in which Emma drugs and murders a group of footballers’ wives that suggests the kind of movie this could have been. One of the women even draws a bright-red smiley face over Emma’s mouth in lipstick which makes her look like The Joker’s apprentice, right before she goes about her stabby business with a couple of kebab skewers.
Lawes also treats us to a terrific shot looking down onto the carnage Emma has wrought – a spinning collage of human corpses, empty champagne bottles and blood stains – that is properly chilling, while a great moment in the same scene sees Emma attack Lenard with a silver drinks tray. She rains down blow after frenzied blow until he loses consciousness and Lawes ensures we feel every smack and thwack. If the rest of the film had lived up to this one perfect sequence it might have been something to treasure.
Monochrome: Final Thoughts
Despite its ambition and occasional impressive visual flourish, Lawes’ film is wrecked by its slow pace, poor writing and dull, unconvincing characters. A film dealing with a young woman’s disillusionment with money after it wrecks her relationship is one worth telling, but deserves more sophisticated treatment than this.
Monochrome’s attempts at newsworthiness – rich money men, land-bankers and footballers’ wives – suggests it has something to say about the corrosiveness of 21st Century capitalism, but I’m not convinced it has. Money is the root of all evil? Rich people are awful but killing them is even worse? I don’t know, and very much doubt Lawes does either.
What is your favourite serial killer movie? Let us know in the comments below.
Monochrome is now available in the US on DVD and VOD.
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