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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 24 April 2008

MacKenzie Crook and Colm Meaney

Three wishes of a Tube driver crossing the line of good taste

THREE AND OUT
Directed by Jonathan Gershfield
Certificate 12

I GATHER the charity premiere this week in Leicester Square was picketed by transport workers, which is unusual to say the least. Could it be something to do with the opening minutes, in which two passengers topple off two Underground station platforms and are squashed by an oncoming train?
There’s blood splattered all over the windscreen, and the same driver’s (Mackenzie Crook) horrified face staring through the glass.
I would have thought this would have made an admirable start to a horror movie, and a gift for the promotion people: “Are your nerves strong enough to take on the Northern Line?”
But no. It’s a comedy, albeit a blackish one and not in the best of taste. The cadaver on the line at Charing Cross station is known as a “one under”, likewise the poor chap who jumped off the platform at East Finchley.
The driver, Paul Callow, is given a couple of days off to get over the shock, and that’s when his two best friends (Mark Benton, Rhashan Stone) tell him about a little-known rule at London Underground – the one nobody talks about.
Three “under” within a month, and you’re out – forcibly retired with 10 years’ salary in one lump sum.
Paul is a wannabe writer with a blank first page staring at him every morning from his desk. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime to get out of London and pen his first novel, and he falls for temptation.
All he needs now is a body to fit the bill, and he has three days to find one. He runs across the suitable victim in the shape of a vagrant (Colm Meaney) with nothing left to live for and about to commit suicide anyway. He agrees to a riotous last weekend, and the pair set out to make the most of it.
The premise of this comedy is so absurd that it is just too big a step to take to believe any of it. Someone should have minded the gap.

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