The Martins (2001)

Cautiously Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Tony Grounds

Cinematographer: David Johnson

Composer: Richard Hartley

Cast: Lee Evans, Kathy Burke, Linda Bassett, Eric Byrne, Terri Dumont, Lennie James, Paddy Considine

When he fails to win the holiday of his dreams in a competition run by the local newspaper – the latest in a series of life’s disappointments – long-term unemployed Hatfield resident Robert, married with two children, snaps, imprisons the prize’s rightful(ish) recipients, and takes his family on the holiday anyway (a trip to the Isle of Man), all the while waving an unloaded pistol at anyone who annoys him or gets in his way, in Grounds’s sporadically entertaining if ultimately rather sentimental comedy-drama. Iain.Stott