tony-icon

One of the first lessons every schlock-fiend learns early on is “don’t judge a film by its video-box.”  Fantastic art can obscure cheapo duds and lousy and/or decep­tive graph­ics can often do a bad job of sell­ing a good film.  For a recent exam­ple of the lat­ter idea, con­sider the ad cam­paign for Tony.  The box makes it look like any num­ber of psycho-sploitation shock­ers, right down to the horror-angled sub­ti­tling of the film as Tony: London Serial Killer.  However, if you actu­ally watch the film you’ll dis­cover it’s some­thing alto­gether dif­fer­ent from what its box is sell­ing: unique, seri­ous and much more dis­turb­ing in its quiet way than any gore-a-thon could hope to be.

The title char­ac­ter, played in a dis­arm­ing and sub­tle man­ner by Peter Ferdinando, is not an obvi­ous lunatic.  Instead, he’s one of those sad souls who ekes out an exis­tence on the fringe of soci­ety.  Tony is a socially-stunted, pos­si­bly autis­tic loner who is on the dole.  Most days are spent wan­der­ing about aim­lessly, occa­sion­ally stop­ping into a pub or a whore­house in an attempt to behave the way he thinks a man should behave.  He also spends much of his free time watch­ing VHS tapes of old action flicks, mostly of the b-movie variety.

Tony’s social skills are weak at best (he’s fond of quot­ing First Blood in his rare con­ver­sa­tions with oth­ers) and he lives a par­tic­u­larly grimy-looking coun­cil flat in a down-market area of London.  Thus, his rare inter­ac­tions are lim­ited to society’s dregs: junkies, hus­tlers and the occa­sional author­ity fig­ure.  He’s not too bright so he is fre­quently taken advan­tage of… but woe be unto those who blun­der or brow­beat their way into his flat.  They soon dis­cover the place stinks like a rot­ting corpse — and that Tony has a very fatal way of deal­ing with awk­ward social sit­u­a­tions in his home.

The above premise could have been the grist for another psycho-thriller but the film­mak­ers behind Tony take a dif­fer­ent and very reward­ing approach.  The script avoids a horror-movie struc­ture, instead going for an indie-movie episodic style.  This approach, com­bined with Gerard Johnson’s min­i­mal­ist, almost documentary-like direc­to­r­ial tech­niques, gives the film a drift­ing, hyp­notic rhythm that makes Tony’s peri­odic out­bursts of vio­lence all the more unnerving.

The film also takes a dis­pas­sion­ate autho­r­ial voice that nei­ther glo­ri­fies nor con­demns the main character’s actions.  It uses him the way other films of this ilk use a con­ven­tional audience-identification fig­ure, ask­ing us to step into his shoes and attempt to under­stand his odd life.  As a result, the viewer is forced to think about the exter­nal forces that shape the character’s behav­ior and, in some cases, uncon­sciously abet his killings.  This tack gives Tony an effec­tive and unique ele­ment of social cri­tique that is effec­tive with­out being heavy-handed or didactic.

Equally impor­tant to the film’s effec­tive­ness is Ferdinando’s per­for­mance in the title role.  He com­pletely side­steps psycho-flick the­atrics, mak­ing Tony a dys­func­tional neb­bish who can be oddly like­able at times.  He can also tap into the pathos or the dark humor of a moment with­out over­play­ing it.  When the time comes for his char­ac­ter to com­mit a mur­der, it is done in a blank and unthink­ing man­ner that is sev­eral times scarier than any amount of scenery-chewing “scary” antics could ever be.

To sum up, Tony is a dark and potent lit­tle gem that will catch cult-film types by sur­prise.  It takes the path less trav­eled into serial-killer ter­ri­tory and comes back with a impres­sively com­plex and art­ful nar­ra­tive that will stay with you long after the cred­its have fin­ished rolling.