PIMP

by Mark'd Commode

3 out of 10

Release Date: 21st May 2010

Director: Robert Cavanah

Cast: Robert Cavanah, Danny Dyer, Billy Boyd, Gemma Chan, Robert Fucilla, Barbara Nedeljakova, Hilary Hamilton, Wil Johnson, Silas Carson, Corey Johnson, Suzy Amy with Martin Compston and Scarlett Alice Johnson

Writer: Robert Cavanah & Jon Kirby

Trailer: PIMP

Whilst this won’t be the worst Danny Dyer (DEAD CERT) movie you’ll ever see, it’s probably the worst movie you’ll ever see about the sex industry.  Our hero is played by an extremely odious Robert Cavanah (EASTENDERS), who is being used as the subject for a documentary detailling the sleazier side of world’s oldest trade.  The assembled faux-footage makes up what we are watching.  Also written and directed by Cavanah this comes across as a misfiring exercise in ego-scratching.  You get the same feeling from watching Pimp as you do on your first day of work, being shown around by the company knob who thinks he’s being really cool.  You are aware that they are living in oblivion yet you choose to humour them for some reason. Cavanah’s pimp is that guy and the film comes across as if it’s the coolest thing to happen to cinema viewers in years, only it isn’t.  It’s tired, laboured and only cool if you are either Cavanagh himself or a sheltered teenage w*nker.

What plot there is takes in a war between the Pimp’s crime family (led by Danny Dyer) and a Chinese firm.  The war has been instigated by a change in allegiances by a Chinese prostitute (Gemma Chan – EXAM).  The Pimp decides to go beyond the call of duty to protect her / look good for the film crew. There is also the mystery of another prostitute who goes missing for reasons I have forgot about.  A sick ‘snuff’ video that is doing the rounds and assorted familiar faces wondering what they are doing in this movie at all?

On the whole Pimp is a confusing mess to follow and coherence seems to be way down Cavanagh’s list of priorities.  So is titilation or sauciness.  I know, I know, but I would expect a film about the sex trade to be somewhat more revealing both visually and OK, story wise.  But no, Pimp earns it’s 18 certificate because of a lot of gratuitous swearing.  Danny Dyer even has a swear box that he loves to jam with money as he creates new C word led expletives. The plots all seem to bottom out and resolve somehow with a villain of the piece raising his face towards the end.  A likeable lead would have been nice and you can actually take pleasure in a running joke in that the ‘faux’ film crew never step in to stop the Pimp from having his ass kicked.  They just keep the camera rolling and laugh quietly.

The biggest shame is that the acting is naturalistic and fairly competent across the board.  Danny Dyer seems well cast and happy as the soho porn baron and I was wishing his character was in it for longer.  The top billing on the poster / DVD sleeve is a misnomer as he has a supporting role that probably adds up 15minutes at the very most.  Pity poor old Billy Boyd (ECSTASY) from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.  How on earth his agent landed him in this amount of trouble we’ll never know.  Other familiar faces like Martin Compston (PIGGY) and Scarlett Alice Johnson (THE REEDS) dip in and out to no effect other than to chalk up another credit.

I was unfamiliar with Robert Cavanah before I saw Pimp but a look down his IMDB credits show that he is a TV mainstay.  I wish him the best with his film career as an actor but I also sincerely hope that we see no more actor, director, writer efforts like this.  There were no insights into the life of a pimp that your average man on the street couldn’t come up with.  It just comes across as a self-important, actor’s vanity piece with no clue as to how to construct an entertaining drama.  I’ve seen worse britpics but few as ego-fuelled yet impotent.

3 out of 10:  Pimp is bailed out by good performances from a well assembled cast.  This doesn’t disguise the fact that it’s lead actor Robert Cavanah‘s very lame calling card to Hollywood and Wardour Street.  Putrid.

SCROLL DOWN TO READ JOE PESCI’s BRILLIANT COUNTER-REVIEW. 

WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT PERSON IN BEFORE?

One thought on “PIMP”

  1. READ JOE PESCI II’s sacking of this weird piece of ego-licking.

    Life’s tough for a pimp. It’s not something I ever thought about, but evidently Robert Cavanah has, so much so that he made a film about it. Unfortunately I don’t think he got round to asking any pimps about their job and so what we have in the imaginatively titled Pimp is a film about what an actor thinks it might be like. (Tsk, won’t I have egg on my face if the Pimps’ Union complains that I completely missed the film’s searing accuracy and compelling examination of the multifaceted nature of this misunderstood and challenging role. Oh well.)

    As the conceit of the film is ‘here’s a week in the life of your friendly neighbourhood sex-slave-driver’ it is only fair that the said sex-slave-driver should hog the camera. By a remarkable coincidence the actor playing the role just happens to be the writer/producer/director who would have decided on that very conceit. So we spend a lot of time with Robert Cavanah’s Woody (snigger). Sadly, this is not time well spent. He’s a decent actor but you never care what’s going to happen to him. Who am I kidding, the highlights of the film are when he gets beaten up. And my god his jokes are old. And the decision to make Woody a ‘nice’ pimp doesn’t feel right. I suppose he wanted to give the character ‘depth’, and maybe explode the idea that pimps are violent, greedy, drug-addled misogynists (see Shane Richie in The Reverend). So we see Woody fall in love and take part in a poetry class. Yes. He has a sensitive side, and he hates having to get rough with the girls, poor diddums. And he reads broadsheet newspapers so he’s not thick. Except he is.

    This focus on our irritating and stupid protagonist means we see little of the rest of the cast, which is perhaps just as well for the sake of their reputations. And who did Billy Boyd annoy to get his non-role? Middle-Earth seems a long way away; I think I wept at one point when the great Pippin (or Merry) was saying something rude. The prostitutes and porn stars are a surprisingly colourless bunch. Gemma Chan does all she can with an effectively non-speaking role, Scarlett Alice Johnson turns up for no real reason I could discern as a radical-pornography-as-social-protest-film-maker (or something) and various others turn up primarily in order to shout at our nice pimp and make his day difficult. (And pity poor Susie Amy, reduced from the glamour and intellectual élan of Footballers’ Wives to St Pancras-based transsexual.)

    So a thoughtful bailiff hands Woody a snuff DVD whilst evicting him. I’m not sure if we find out who sent it, it might have been the runaway Russian prostitute, though not the one who snuffs it on the DVD. Having failed to identify the mysterious monkey (see below) our hero has some difficulty in finding the location for the next broadcast. Fortunately luck is on his side as he realises that the snuffing is going on in the very same building he just happens to be sitting in! Cavanah’s look to the camera on realising this is priceless and almost enough to make the film worth watching. He nearly gets there in the nick of time, but is overtaken by the villainous Chinese (the ‘fucking Chinks!’ as one character refers to them as he makes a futile lunge at them) who seem to be beating everyone up. The turf war between the fearsome Dyer and the Fucking Chinks!™ seems to be an important plot strand, revolving around a Chinese prostitute who isn’t really a prostitute who Dyer has stolen and is the object of poor Woody’s desire.

    Warning: this review now contains a spoiler; but it is my duty to report that the killer in the snuff DVD is Danny Dyer in a gorilla mask. You’ll know it’s Danny Dyer in a gorilla mask long before the literal reveal (reminiscent of Tower Block ‘s Scooby-Doo homage) because he speaks, and you’ll think ‘that’s Danny Dyer’s voice’. The fact that Woody doesn’t immediately recognise his boss seems odd, especially as Dyer is putting on a ‘heavy’ voice with theatrical pauses for his role as a London gangland kingpin type thing. Dyer is appallingly miscast, but exhibits all the usual traits of the Danny Dyer Icon: lots of swearing and a somewhat dismissive attitude to women (‘get those slags back on their backs’ etc.) but the idea that he is some sort of underworld overlord is ludicrous.

    One of the many frustrating things about Pimp is its framing device. At the start we are told that the film comprises real footage from a week in the life of our titular pimp. But almost everything undermines this: the crazy captions which accompany each character as they make an appearance (e.g. ‘Clarisssa: a proper actress’) (and that’s another thing: we’re introduced to numerous characters who we never see again); the quick cutting as Dyer introduces himself; the fact that we are constantly aware that these actors are acting (not in a bad way, but people who know they’re being filmed behave differently to actors who are acting). Proof of this last factor is underlined by the inclusion of everybody’s favourite boxing fireman Terry Marsh for a celebrity cameo. He delivers his (irrelevant) spiel exactly as a sportsman would when being interviewed, and that naturalism is light years away from the acting going on elsewhere. I’m not criticising the actors; they are handicapped by the film’s conceit and by the fact that many of them are familiar screen stalwarts (you can’t really believe that someone’s a noted porn star if you’re thinking ‘that’s Van Statten from Doctor Who’).

    And then there is the film crew itself. I was somewhat dubious about their technology (cameras in glasses and buttons, but maybe that’s just me betraying my luddite-like lack of techno-know-how). But would they really have stuck with Woody what with snuff movies, Danny Dyer scenery-munching, Fucking Chinks!™ and missing-presumed-dead prostitutes all over the place (well, not literally all over the place seeing as they’re missing)? Maybe they thought there’d be an award in it. Trust me, there isn’t.

    The running time of 88 minutes suggested some cheerfully sleazy thriller, but it slouches on for ever. On the plus side, the adult industry does seem to be very unappealing; no-one could accuse Pimp of being a porno-opportunities-promo; it is about as erotic as a dead slug (that’s actually a compliment – it at least avoids the hypocrisy of making the sex industry sexy). After (well, during) watching it you just want to have a bath (and not because you’ve spent 88 minutes masturbating). Ultimately you feel no wiser than at the start. Surely Pimp should have enlightened us to the workings of the oldest profession? How does the average prostitute feel about the job? No idea. What about the pimp? Well, he’s conflicted but a nice guy doing a dirty job. And his life is tough. And people at the top are stupid, ignorant and callous (like we need a film to tell us that), and the Fucking Chinks!™ are trouble for everyone. A grubby experience.

    3 out of 10 – Joe Pesci II

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