Review of "The Score," a crime musical with songs by Johnny Flynn
An unusual but still weak debut by Malachi Smith.
Troy (Will Poulter) and Mike (Johnny Flynn) arrive at a roadside coffee shop to pull off a dubious deal. The business partners are delayed for an hour, two, three... The long minutes are brightened by the waitress (Naomi Aki), with whom Troy instantly falls in love, and by the songs the crooks periodically sing.
Malachi Smith rather quickly destroys the expectations of the audience, who were probably hoping for a Guy Ritchie-esque crime showdown. Instead of a gangster story, a few minutes later, a leisurely movie unfolds on the screen with the characters, each of them anticipating something: Mike - a successful outcome of the case, Troy - the beginning of a new novel, Gloria - a better life. The cafe, on the other hand, is a stopping point, a meeting place for kindred spirits, a stopover after which all will not be the same. We can hardly think of many pictures where petty criminals, taking a pause in a succession of violence, suddenly begin to sing. Smith, on the contrary, relies on music: his characters are precisely misguided poets who do not fit into the framework of their own lives or into the film in which they exist.
On the surface, such a picture looks like something out of the ordinary. In part it is, but the blurring of the genre does not make "The Final Chord" stand out, but rather buries it deep into the bottom of the failed realizations. It's too drawn-out for a crime thriller, too theatrical for a small indie film, not rhythmic enough for a musical. Admittedly, the music as a whole here merely fills a void in the dramaturgy and slows down an already sluggish narrative.
In the end, in a continuous discussion of small details and word meanings, the characters stomp around in the same place. There is no magic of long conversations, the split-screen effect adds no originality, and the claustrophobic setting causes nothing but longing. One is left to drift along to Johnny Flynn's tunes and hope to stay awake until the credits roll.
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