This is one of Danny Boyle's lesser known films, probably because it was a made for TV movie with a low budget. It tells the story of Pete (Michael Begley), a wannabe DJ who gets a job as a vacuum salesman (partly to reclaim some sense of masculinity and mostly so his girlfriend can stop being a strip-o-gram). He's paired with the abrasive, foul-mouthed and morally reprehensible senior salesman Tommy Rag (Timothy Spall) who is tasked with showing him the ropes while simultaneously psyching himself up for the annual salesman award which he believes, with his sales record, he is destined to win.
"What if you don't get it?" asks Pete.
"I'll kill myself." Replies Tommy, completely deadpan.
Rag has what seems to be a genetically ingrained need to make sales - with a work-ethic that soars past commendable and goes straight to worrying. He sees potential clients in hitchhikers and gas station patrons and prides himself on selling customers a product they don't need and can't afford (we get the distinct sense that he gets far more pleasure shifting a dodgy product than a quality one).
A key insight into Rag as a character comes during a humorous scene in which he plays his self-made motivational tape for Pete. The tape is basically just him shouting the word 'sell' over and over again (with a few profanities woven in) set to a backing track of angry heavy metal music. Not how to make a sale, or why to make a sale, just that a sale must be made. Instruction rather than instructional. The actual methodology for achieving said sale is completely unspecified which perfectly suits Tommy's worldview - a world in which the sale itself matters above all else and any and all means are on the table to achieve it. The film definitely evokes the likes of Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross while still having a uniquely British middle-lower-class voice and outlook.
The main reason I watched this film is because I'm a big Timothy Spall fan. As expected, he didn't disappoint. With Rag he gives viewers a character that'll stay with them for some time; arguably his best performance outside of his work with Mike Leigh. Rag is your standard sleazy salesman cranked up to 11 - almost to the point of sheer grotesquery. A lesser performer might hold something back in the hopes of maintaining some semblance of dignity but Spall, brilliant actor that he is, actively leans into the more ugly, even sickening, aspects of Tommy Rag. And it's true - you might never look at Timothy Spall the same way again. When we see him pitching the vacuum to the guy with the bad hand at the start of the film and he holds out his pen for him to sign the deed, leaning in with a nasty leer and a mock-genial smile and saying "I'm not leaving until ya do" we are looking at something truly disgusting on the screen.
So how does Spall manage to keep us invested in such a horrible character? Well, a big aspect is humour. Not exclusively, but in large part due to Spall, I found myself laughing out loud several times during the film. Spall's delivery is absolutely killer - I'm thinking here specifically of two of his lines, perhaps not the best lines in the film in terms of writing alone, but elevated to levels of grim hilarity by Spall's sinister and blackly comic delivery (when Tommy tells Pete what Rule 6 is and then later when he repeats the phrase 'If we must' with all the dark connotations it implies).
Michael Begley as Pete is good too. He's hapless but with just enough gumption to prove an effective comic foil to Tommy Rag. For Pete the film charts a sort of descent into madness as he questions what he is slowly morphing into while zooming around the streets of Lancashire in Tommy's car, wheeling and dealing. It dawns on him that the unexpectedly sinister business of selling vacuums is so deceitful and murky that you either need to be completely closed-off like Tommy, revelling in the repulsion, or walk away altogether. Any middle option will see you destroyed by guilt and shame.
However, it's clear both the writer and director were more enamoured by the character of Tommy Rag which seems to be where most of the attention went. As a result the character of Pete suffers a little. It also feels like a good deal less thought was put into Pete's ending than Tommy's.
The screenplay by Jim Cartwright is truly excellent - a very accomplished piece of writing that is somehow both caricatural and true to life. It rockets along at a good pace laced with funny and quotable dialogue and masterfully woven character-defining scenes. When the film gets a little slower and weightier towards the end it feels well earned. Cartwright provides us with a screenplay that achieves what it sets out to do and gives us a world and story with its own stakes and internal logic.
The nastiness of the humour and interactions might put some viewers off but audiences who stick with the film will come to get the sense that it's not nastiness for the sake of nastiness - the laugh rate may justify the humour but there's more to it than that; a sort of tentative profundity that lurks below the surface (although oftentimes a good deal below). There's a lot of pain and sadness in this film that is, for the most part, never overtly brought to the fore - Cartwright trusts his audience is intelligent enough to not require having everything spelled out.
Also of note is the great direction by Danny Boyle. You get the sense he's really in his element with this one, giving us an incredibly visual film. What springs to mind is the sequence when Tommy enters his apartment to change clothes and leads Pete into a dingy little room hidden behind suits dangling from hangers. With his fast cuts and unusual camera-angles Boyle makes the scene feel at once cinematic and claustrophobic. It's a small scene that most directors wouldn't see the potential of but in Boyle's hands it's utterly breath-taking. But despite his use of trademark quick cuts and frenetic camera-work, Boyle also knows when to let the camera linger and remain still - such as during Tommy's trancelike monologue about his dream from which the film takes its title or the revelatory car journey to Blackpool near the end.
It must be said that the actual video quality is pretty low, terrible even - the budget probably wasn't great for the film and Boyle shot it on a pretty low-tech digital camera. This will no doubt put some people off. However, I do think in some ways the low quality actually helps the film; Tommy Rag is a larger than life character - it is somewhat fitting that we never see him with any proper clarity, only occasionally catch hazy glimpses of him. The picture quality is raw and ugly - like the film's subject matter and character. In fact, trying to recall images from the film after seeing it sort of feels like looking back on some sort of weird fever dream.
There is some great casting for the smaller roles too - such as Caroline Pegg as the single mother to whom Pete makes his deceitful first sale and Alice Barry (I think) as Rag's disgruntled co-worker (with whom Spall has a particularly electric confrontation in the ladies' toilets towards the film's end).
The main issue I had was with the ending. While I found it perfectly fitting for Tommy's character, I also found it a little too grand and dramatic for a film that really shines in its smaller, less overtly ambitious scenes. That being said, there's little denying that the ending is sad and even quite moving. Like I say, it's not really a big deal but, when I try to think of the movie's lesser attributes, that's what comes to mind.
All in all it's a great piece of work, with great direction from Danny Boyle (who makes a low-budget TV movie feel dazzlingly, even dizzyingly, cinematic), a first-class screenplay by Jim Cartwright and a legendary performance from Timothy Spall. I acknowledge it won't be to everyone's taste (the film's 6.5 IMDB aggregate rating is testament to that) but if you're a fan of the paradoxical and harsh world of sales as depicted in the likes of Glengarry Glen Ross and have a tolerance for some fairly nasty humour and characters then this will be a good film for you. A must-see for fans of Danny Boyle and Timothy Spall.
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