Squint and you can picture the two leads of this film playing the Gallagher brothers circa the big Oasis bust-up of 2009 – all front and swagger, eyebrows set into aggrieved furrows. Instead, in this small-time British crime drama, James Nelson-Joyce and Kyle Rowe play old mates dealing drugs in the fictional northern town where they grew up. It’s a brawling tale about a man who feels trapped by toxic masculinity, though in the end the film too backs itself into a bit of a dead end of macho violence.
Nelson-Joyce is Wes, who has been questioning his life and choices since his best mate Tommy (Rowe) went to prison. Wes and his girlfriend Zoe (Olivia Frances Brown) have just had a baby, and there’s even talk of a job. Then Tommy is released, a repugnant bully unwilling to let Wes go. Rowe’s ferocious performance feels horribly real, like an angry dysregulated little boy with a need to break anything he can’t have. Tommy’s rage gives the film some nauseating moments; perhaps even harder to stomach is the casual misogyny in Wes’s circle. Reputation is a grim portrait of male rage, though it doesn’t seem particularly interested in the reasons behind it.
There is a real sense of place though, in rows of narrow terraced houses backing on to wide open expanses of countryside. And for a film put together on what looks like a minuscule budget, it gets a considerable amount done. There’s a promising plotline about one of Wes and Tommy’s customers, the mother of a murdered 10-year-old boy, as well as little flickers here and there of another life open to Wes. But in the end it all builds to a big grandiose violent ending, which is a bit of a shame.
● Reputation is on digital platforms from 28 July.
