Stormy Monday

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Movie
German title Stormy Monday
Original title Stormy Monday
Country of production USA , UK
original language English
Publishing year 1988
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Mike Figgis
script Mike Figgis
production Nigel Stafford-Clark
music Mike Figgis
camera Roger Deakins
cut David Martin
occupation

Stormy Monday is a film noir- esque detective film and the first full-length feature film by former rock musician and now director Mike Figgis , who is set in the British port city of Newcastle .

action

The unscrupulous Texan businessman Cosmo (Tommy Lee Jones) and his mafia buddies want to redevelop the ailing harbor district in Newcastle, England, with a large-scale property speculation. A gigantic luxury renovation is to take place. In order to create a mood for this, an “American week” is celebrated in the economically badly damaged northern English port city with the support of corrupt local politicians. Cosmo and his backers promise a huge profit from the business, u. a. the jazz club Key Club is supposed to be bought up by Finney (Sting), but he refuses to sell his small, well-running club. Without the property, Cosmo cannot realize its ambitious plans.

The dreamy jazz fan Brendan (Sean Bean) works for Finney as a cleaner. He is also used as a chauffeur when the Krakow free jazz band “Krakow Jazz Ensemble” , which Finney hires , is to be picked up from the airport.
Kate (Melanie Griffith), ex-lover Cosmos from Minnesota , dreams of a career as an actress and is still used by Cosmo as a " hostess ". She works as a waitress at Weegee's Bar and the two young people fall in love.

Cosmo's plan to use his henchmen to force Finney to sign the contract thwarts Brendan after he overhears Cosmo's shop stewards Patrick and Tony in Weegee's bar about whether to kill Finney straight away or just intimidate him with violence.
With that he puts himself and his girlfriend Kate in mortal danger, terror and violence break out over them. After a party with the Polish band and Polish immigrants, where it turns out that Kate's father is also of Polish origin, the two are followed and ambushed on their way home in the pouring rain. Brendan can shoot one of the two men. There are followers of Cosmos, who have the corpse removed so that no attention is caused.
The lovers also barely escape a car bomb , but it claims two other lives because Brendan borrows the car to one of the Polish jazz musicians and conquers it. A confrontation ensues between Cosmo and Brendan, and the boy threatens the former with a gun . Finney can persuade Brendan to give them to him. Kate notes dryly that Cosmo was lucky that she wasn't holding the pistol in her hand, because she pulled the trigger and Finney makes it clear to Cosmo that he and his people have to disappear from Newcastle, never to return.

Remarks

  • Mike Figgis grew up, like rock star Sting, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne .
  • The title comes from a famous blues song by T-Bone Walker from 1947.
  • The film relies a lot on live music. At the city reception for Cosmo, the “Krakow Jazz Ensemble” housed in the same hotel was booked at the last minute as a replacement and played a daring Free Jazz / Jimi-Hendrix version of the Star-Spangled Banner . Sting as Finney plays bass, of course: in the empty Key Club an excellent melancholy jazz bass solo. For the recruitment of the musicians of the "Krakow Jazz Ensemble" Figgis resorted to the People Band , to which he himself belonged 20 years earlier.
  • The Finney Club recordings were shot in a warehouse.
  • In the book "My First Movie: Twenty Celebrated Directors Talk About Their First Film," edited by Stephen Lowenstein , Pantheon Books (November 2002), the following is noted: Tim Roth was considered too unattractive to work with Melanie (Griffith) . So Sean Bean was selected on the basis of photographs as the only person who would be suitable as Melanie's co-star. "I (Mike Figgis) had seen Sean in Caravaggio , thought he had that certain something, and liked him."

Awards and nominations

  • 1988 won: the "Special mention" at the "Mystfest" for Mike Figgis
  • Nominated in 1988: as best film at “Mystfest”, also Mike Figgis

criticism

  • film-dienst : The ironically drawn image of the sale of a once flourishing economic metropolis is combined with atmospheric genre images to create a solid gangster story that does not always find a convincing unit.

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