Deviation (2012)

Saying that Deviation isn't the worst movie that Danny Dyer has ever starred in is a bit like saying that the damage to your social life isn't the worst thing about having the Ebola virus. Either way, you're in a whole world of pain. I've long ago stopped expecting anything other than the same lazy, wide-boy geezer act in every one of his movies and he hasn't done anything to prove me wrong in the last five years or so.

Writer/director J. K. Amalou is the latest person to give Dyer some time onscreen and pocket money to spend on Burberry and substances designed to further destroy his braincells which makes him the person to point the finger at. He picked Dyer for the main role, he wrote the awful script that Dyer gets to work with and he directed the movie in a . . . . . . . . . well, to be fair, the direction of the film isn't TOO bad in places. Dammit, I hate being fair-minded sometimes.

Dyer plays Frank Norton, a murderer and a geezer. Which means that he just turns in yet another lazy, wide-boy geezer act mentioned in the opening paragraph. His character appears only a minute or two into the movie, taking a nurse (Amber, played by Anna Walton) hostage and driving around to different places for no obvious reason, other than padding the idea out to feature film length. His background is relayed to viewers during a clumsy moment when he fiddles with the car radio during various news reports. Which sums up the entire film.

Anna Walton does slightly better than Dyer, but she's hampered by two big problems. The first is that terrible script. The second is the fact that she has to continually share the screen with Dyer. The main role wouldn't be good for any actor, the character of Norton changes his mind and mood every few minutes in a way that is supposed to be interesting and clever but comes across as juvenile and silly. It's serious mental illness as written by a ten-year-old. The erratic performance from Dyer is, subsequently, a complete shambles, a car crash of a performance reminding everyone of the big question: "just how does this man continue to get work?" The rest of the cast includes James Doherty, David Fynn, Alan McKenna and Roy Smiles, but it's Dyer you'll be unable to forget, for all the wrong reasons, after the end credits roll.

As I said earlier, the direction isn't too bad. It's competent, and the only element of the movie I can bring myself to praise (even though it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to do so). The rest, in case you couldn't read my subtle cues, is terrible. Implausible, impossible to care about, horribly misanthropic and down at the bottom of the septic tank with so many other Danny Dyer movies.

2/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Deviation-Blu-ray-Danny-Dyer/dp/B00696WONU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1366761348&sr=8-2&keywords=deviation