It's Payback time (Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (DVD))

Member Name: cswann

Product:	Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (DVD)
Date:	15/10/04 (277 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great story

Disadvantages: Low budget, Superfluous historical scenes

The novel on which this movie is based is one of my all-time favourite novels. Written by B.S. Johnson in 1973 and although it was largely ignored at the time, it’s now called a “cult” novel. In fact, Johnson’s work has gained in popularity more recently, and an autobiography by Jonathan Coe, published in June this year, has helped a lot, too

Back to the movie. I think it’s safe to say it’s “freely adapted”, rather than a faithful conversion to the screen. For one thing the book itself is very short, and it probably needed a bit of fleshing out to get a feature film out of it.

The movie was made in 2000, and it was scheduled for release around September 2001. I remember reading a review of it in “Uncut” magazine, and planning to go and see it as soon as it came to a cinema in my area.

It was held up by distributors for over a year (due to the dark subject material and a jittery post 9/11 world) but I did finally get to see it at the cinema in 2002.

Nick Moran plays Christie, a clerk in a large office in London, in just about as mundane job as you could get by the look of it. He’s a simple kind of guy, who, beneath it all just wants to get a girlfriend and to get rich.
He lives with his mother, played by Shirley Ann Field. She is dying of cancer, and he helps to feed her, wash her, all the time getting frustrated that she is chain-smoking and therefore not doing a lot to help herself.

Christie experiences a kind of epiphany when he starts attending an evening class on accounting, where he discovers the art of double-entry book keeping.
He begins to wonder whether he can apply the same basic principles to his everyday life. If something bad happens to him, Christie thinks there’s some equal way of getting his own back – why not scrape the paintwork of someone’s fancy car, for instance?
After all, every credit must be balanced by a debit. It’s a great theme.

As background to the accounting theories, there are some sections of the movie which concentrate on 16th century goings-on revolving around the monk, Luca Bartolomeo Pacioli, the inventor of the double entry accounting system.
The movie would have been better without these scenes, though. It’s a sub plot that really isn’t that very important and could have been dispensed with, in my view

There are many similarities with the films of directors such as Derek Jarman, Lindsey Anderson, Peter Greenaway and even Ken Russell.
The movie is directed by Paul Tickell, who made the acclaimed “Crush Proof” as his feature debut in 1999. Tickell had been set for the Catholic priesthood, before moving to the music industry, television and documentary filmmaking. He won a BAFTA for his 1995 short film “Zinky Boys Go Underground”. Following on from “Christy Malry’s own double entry”, in 2001, he made “Reel life” the Denver High School massacre documentary.

“Christie Malry” is definitely a show case for Moran – who has often looked as though he could become a new Michael Caine (with all due reference to Jude Law getting the “Alfie” role!)
Also appearing are Neil Shuke, Kate Ashfield (as Christie’s girlfriend), Mel Raido and Sophie Knijff.

There’s an excellent soundtrack from Luke Haines (of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder). The CD of the soundtrack was actually released long before the movie’s release, due to the hold-ups.

The movie comes in at a fairly short 90 minutes long

Overall, it’s a movie I will without question purchase on DVD, partly because I love the story it tells so much, partly because the movie was a very good black comedy. For someone without that love for BS Johnson’s novels – it make only warrant a 3 star review. So in the end 4 stars seems fair.

DVD - £5.99 on amazon.co.uk
No video available

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