Flasz On Film

Directed by Dan Clark, transitioning from the world of TV into the big leagues of big screen entertainment, A Kind of Kidnapping continues the long tradition of dark comedies about inept criminals kidnapping someone for ransom and quickly realizing they may have found themselves in over their heads. Think The King of Comedy. Think Fargo. These are the shoulders of giants you shall be standing on while attempting to tell a story in that vein and as you do so, you will be compared to Scorsese and the Coen Brothers. It is inevitable. And unless you’re some kind of a directorial wunderkind on the way to take over the world of cinema with your ingenious way of doing a movie within clearly established microgenre parameters, chances are people will come after you.  

And they shouldn’t. Because it’s highly unlikely that A Kind of Kidnapping would ever surpass Scorsese or the Coens in anyone’s eyes. It’s almost certainly a given. However, let us not allow perfection to become the enemy of good. Because Dan Clark’s movie is just that. Good.  

If you check your expectations at the door, you might even find that this perfectly canonical narrative about a young couple – Brian and Maggie, where he (Jack Parry-Jones) drives a taxi and she (Kelly Wenham) waits tables and wallows in the futility of trying to become an actress – who one day decide to kidnap a vile-looking Tory MP (Patrick Baladi) and hold him for ransom, has enough of a bite to support its bark. I’m pretty sure that, unless you’re too cool for school or maybe you identify with Peter Stormare in Dancer in the Dark who “has seen it all”, you’d be able to latch onto Brian and Maggie. I certainly had no issues with that. In fact, their characterizations, broad as they are, fit quite well within the tonal confines of a movie that tries to come across as light-hearted and raunchy while sneakily orchestrating a conversation about the grander injustices of living in Tory Britain. He’s a bit of a loser. She’s a frustrated type-A would-be achiever who wants the world but cannot catch a break. And it just so happens that after a string of unfortunate events that sees Maggie fired from her job, rejected from an audition and then evicted together with Brian from their broom closet-sized apartment which probably cost them an arm and a leg in rent, events take a turn. They end up kidnapping a politician, hold him in an Airbnb and wait for someone to pay the ransom. Problem is that the hostage quickly reveals that he actually quite enjoys the media attention and offers the kidnappers more money if they continue the charade for a while longer and keep him in the spotlight. Expectedly, events escalate from there and the perfectly plotted crime goes off the rails almost immediately.  

Now, what’s interesting about A Kind of Kidnapping is that it tonally belongs in a different era, and it is best described as a caper executed by the characters from The Thick of It and that’s something you just don’t see that often these days. In fact, it would contextualize quite a lot of the foul language this movie is generously bedazzled with. Well, I’m no prude and some examples of crude humour in here really had me chuckle, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for eventually becoming annoyed with perpetual swearing. It hasn’t been in vogue in over a decade and even Tarantino – one of the biggest potty mouths in genre filmmaking – has toned it down in recent years. So, consider yourself warned – if you like your lyrics clean, steer clear.  

I, however, had a lot of fun with this caper, partly because I do find this kind of humour entertaining, and partly because the combination of foulmouthed dick-and-balls jokes, crassness of its narrative exploits, the outlandishness of its central conceit and how it all comments on the world at large made me feel as though this film was written by Malcolm Tucker himself. And I liked that feeling, I should say. As a result, if you pull back, you’ll be able to appreciate A Kind of Kidnapping as a genre exercise in the spirit of a Jonathan Pie rant that starts more or less coherently and quickly descends into angry gesticulating and furiously spitting into the lens, all because it is frankly impossible to comment on the current British political climate without risking an aneurysm. Thus, if you’re on board with the delivery and language of what’s on offer, you’ll immediately get on board with the thematic underpinnings of the narrative that angrily comment on the dire state of the country, the inexcusably lurid behaviour displayed by some of our top political class, the brain rot induced by social media and base-level sensationalism being dumped from the TV screens into our mouths like raw sewage. 

And if you don’t pull back, it is still a competent movie about inept criminals doing stupid things that doesn’t overstay its welcome, prances along its predetermined plot machinations and leaves you perfectly content and entertained. Unless you’re not into swearing, plop jokes, and violence coming at you out of nowhere.  

Suffice it to say that A Kind of Kidnapping is a perfectly competent little movie I wouldn’t be surprised if Troy Duffy had directed instead. It’s an energetic application of a Jonathan-Pie-meets-Malcolm-Tucker transform to the microgenre of inept kidnapping movies. It doesn’t elevate the genre in any appreciable manner, but it has enough fun with its form and execution that it easily justifies its own existence. And if there’s anything about this movie that perhaps feels a bit out of step, it is the title. If Jonathan Pie had written it, there’d be an F-bomb in the title and at least it would have weeded out the Sunday school malcontents ahead of buying a ticket to see it.