To be released tomorrow on DVD: "44 Inch Chest"

Grade: C
44 Inch Chest can be described as six guys sitting around in barely furnished rooms, talking. Actually, one of the six says nothing at all: he sits quietly in the chair to which he’s tied, bruised and bloody and shaking and wondering if — or maybe just when — the other five will kill him.

Or it could be that this fellow, known on screen and in the end credits only as Loverboy, is on hand to pick up some acting tips in a trans-Channel cinematic exchange program. He is played by Melvil Poupaud, a subtle and accomplished young French actor (with notable roles in A Christmas Tale and Time to Leave), and he finds himself surrounded by roaring British lions. Loverboy’s tormentors are Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Dillane, John Hurt, Ian McShane and Ray Winstone, an honor guard of refined ruffianism.

There is a woman in this movie, directed by Malcolm Venville from a script by Louis Mellis and David Scinto (authors of Sexy Beast, the great 2000 gangster drama in which Winstone trembled before the reptilian menace of Ben Kingsley). Her name is Liz, she is played by Joanne Whalley, and she is both marginal to the action and a central catalyst of the drama. Loverboy is her lover; Winstone’s Colin is her jealous, heartsick husband; and the rest of the blokes are Colin’s underworld pals, doing him a good turn by delivering up his rival for rough justice.

There is not much of a story here, and not enough of the mixture of menace and comedy that made Sexy Beast so memorable. There is, as I’ve suggested, a lot of talk: you often feel as if you were watching the workshop production of a half-written play. But the dialogue, richly profane and Mametically self-conscious in its idioms (if you can imagine David Mamet transplanted to London from Chicago), yields its own pleasures. Think of 44 Inch Chest as a piece of chamber music and you can compensate for the thinness of its story and the lack of visual distinction.

Winstone carries the main melody with his raging, weepy impersonation of a tough guy whose soft heart has been trampled and who doesn’t know how to respond. His impulses are violent, and you suspect that violence is a big part of his job, but he mostly seems to want to sit and cry.

This worries his friends, in particular Old Man Peanut (Hurt), whose views on honor, manhood and sex are brutally old school. This puts him somewhat at odds with Meredith (McShane), a suave gay man with a satiny voice and more nuanced views on matters of love and sex.

Mal (Dillane) is the handsome dandy of the bunch, whom Colin at one point suspects of having a thing for Liz, while Archie (Wilkinson), who lives with his aging mother, is the scoutmaster, or perhaps the mother hen.

The four of them, waiting for Colin to act, urging him on and leaving him alone with Loverboy, sometimes seem to be taking a break from some other, livelier movie, and it is a tribute to the skills of both the writers and the actors that the characters are so vivid and interesting. It would be nice if they had a little more to do.