FILM REVIEW The World’s End

A MAN WALKS INTO A BAR?Simon Pegg (right) heads up the cast in ‘The World’s End’, which also stars, from left: Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine and Nick Frost.

A pub crawl with a difference


Cinema
Daniel Carey

THE 1996 film ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ contains one of the most jarring twists in cinema history. Written by Quentin Tarantino, it begins (like ‘Reservoir Dogs’) in the aftermath of a heist, but ends up like ‘The Evil Dead’ trilogy, as the characters find themselves in a trucker bar crawling with vampires. (Sorry if I’ve just ruined the flick for somebody, but come on, it’s almost 20 years old – what do you mean you haven’t seen it?)
‘The World’s End’ has an equally incongruous turn in the road. It begins as a paean to British pub culture, but ends up as something very different.
The last of what’s been dubbed ‘the Cornetto trilogy’, Edgar Wright’s movie stars Simon Pegg as Gary King, an irritating loudmouth who convinces four old friends to recreate a drinking marathon in their home town.
Back in 1990, Gary, Oliver, Steven, Peter and Andy marked their final day of school by devising a plan to drink a pint in each of 12 towns on the ‘golden mile’ in the town of Newtown Haven. They managed nine, which means they never made it to ‘The World’s End’, the name of the last stop on their proposed itinerary.

Twenty years on, Gary is inspired (at an AA meeting, of all things) to finish what they started, and summarises the plan of attack as follows: “One night, five guys, 12 pubs – let battle commence”.
It becomes clear that Gary is living in the past. He still drives the same car he had in 1989, wears a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt, and has an encyclopedic memory of events from long ago. His four friends – played by Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan – have all grown up, although they all appear to playing versions of the same stereotype.
Rosamund Pike (from ‘Die Another Die’ and ‘Jack Reacher’) shows up as Oliver’s sister Sam, a woman both Gary and Steven have the hots for. “We’ll always have the disableds,” she tells Gary, referencing a fumbled encounter in a wheelchair-accessible bathroom with rather less fondness than Humphrey Bogart managed when recalling Paris with Ingrid Bergman in ‘Casablanca’.
For a comedy, we actually have to wait quite a while for the first decent laugh in ‘The World’s End’. It comes when Gary reacts with scorn to a request by Andy (Frost) for tap water. “A man of your legendary prowess drinking rain — it’s like seeing a lion eating hummus,” he says.
The night appears set to break up prematurely when a fight scene in a bathroom sees the picture take a turn for the strange. “Everything’s the same but sort of different,” Sam muses, and the failure of various bartenders to recognise Gary is suddenly explained as Kansas goes bye-bye.
While the twist in ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’ was ridiculed by some, the shift of emphasis here helps bring some energy to a project that appeared to be flagging. We get more choreographed fight scenes – bar stools used as weapons, Gary going into combat on multiple fronts while desperate to finish his pint, and even the odd decapitation.
The violence that mars many a drinking session suddenly becomes a necessary survival tool. Gary’s desperation to finish the pub crawl regardless of the dangers the group now face echoes the single-minded determination of Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold, who told his family in ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’: “This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest.” There’s even some unexpectedly poignant lines towards the end, but it’s too long, and never properly succeeds in either the comedy or horror genres.

Rating 5 out of 10