The Honey Killer at London Independent Film Festival
Dontcha just hate well-heeled City boys? Those untouchable masters of the universe. They’re still cock of the wall despite losing your money, leaving you to shop at Aldi or Lidl. Will you ever see Sainsbury’s again? Can you believe those bastards still have their bonuses and you have sweet fuck-all? What’s worse, the coalition government are taking your jobs and pensions to pay for their fuck-ups. Wouldn’t you like to get some revenge? Inflict a little pain? Do time for murder even?
As the song goes “Payback’s a Mutha” so homicide’s out for most of us. What’s the answer? How can you rise up against the moneyed classes? Or at the very least achieve a smidgen of catharsis? Well if you’re immune to the state hypnosis of the Royal Wedding but can’t be arsed to throw a fire extinguisher off Millbank Tower then new film The Honey Killer is for you.
Richard Harrison’s zero budget comedy noir puts hedge fund manager Darryl well and truly through the wringer. On the surface he seems amicable enough. His well pronounced narration and Ralph Lauren shirt seem to have stumbled straight from Richard Curtis Land and onto a screaming jeep’s bonnet racing for the edge some Spanish cliffs. Why on earth would anyone want to harm this sweet, bumbling buffoon?
Money of course. Darryl’s loaded and probably with your money somewhere down the line. He knows how to duck and dive, be ruthless with cash and win at all costs – he just does it with a cut glass accent and not a Cockney one. The jeep’s driver is his smoking hot fiancé Janine: think Jennifer Lopez in “U-Turn” meets a young Raquel Welsh and you know this chap is punching way above his weight. Didn’t see the double cross coming? Mug.
Ducking Darryl in the Med is the first of Janine’s engagement gifts to her stricken stooge. Still, Janine is a pro at dumping boyfriends but not burying them. Darryl soon teams up with Rik, a psychotic Aussie hit man left high and dry in a Philippine prison for five years. Endearingly deranged Rik has some instantly classic lines. When describing the seminal moment in his life coming face to face with a lethal Brown Snake he snarls, “I went through his neck like a fucking piece of liquorish.”
The route to Darryl’s own Brown Snake moment is littered with peril. Janine is just as conniving as her Eastenders namesake and Darryl seems every bit as gullible as dear old Barry. We wince at his schoolboy errors all the way down to the rascal shirt he ends up wearing. The professional Rik may spout Tarantino lines Neighbours style but he’s just as much of a klutz as his new best friend.
Harrison and his writing partner Laurie Crowter set out to make the antithesis of the social commentary Brit Flick and they largely succeed with enough sun, sea and sex to take our minds off the doom and gloom at home. Taking the guerrilla back to Spain in the form of a film crew is reminiscent of The Comic Strip’s A Fistful of Travellers Cheques or Alex Cox’s Straight To Hell. The sweeping Spanish vistas also call to mind Stephen Frears’ The Hit and even Nick Loves Costa Del Crime picture The Business.
The Honey Killer maybe filmed on an ultra low budget but its ambitions are high. The three leads are impressive. David Hockley’s atmospheric score takes in everything from Ry Cooder to Lalo Schifrin and could place the characters in any decade of the last fifty years. Ruben Chow invests his Darryl with a Hugh Grant lightness that, in one of the film’s funniest scenes descends into a flip-flop Terminator farce. Chen Shilony is suitably sultry as the greedy femme fatal and David Powell delivers his zingers with some good old barbeque relish.
It may not be a classic but The Honey Killer is a great calling card for all concerned and a triumph for zero budget filmmaking, and was all the better for having missed William and Kate getting hitched. Now that’s a bonus worth having.