Tony is a bleak but brilliant film. It takes us through a week in the life of an East London jobless loner who spends most days watching 80s action films on an ancient video recorder and even older TV. Somewhat of a sociopath with very few social skills, he endeavours to strike up conversations with the sad and dispossessed he meets as he trudges the streets.Using a phone box one day, he meets two crack-heads and invites them back to his seedy flat. Once they're off their threepenny bits, he calmly asphyxiates one, chopping his body into pieces before dumping them in a canal. It's not a life-affirming film but it is riveting. It's hard to believe that Tony is director Gerard Johnson's debut feature film as he directs with a light but confident touch and an eye for the nuances of human existence.It's also something of a family affair: director Gerard Johnson is the brother of The The's Matt Johnson and Matt provides the haunting soundtrack (CD available at www.thethe.com). Gerard and Matt's dad Eddie plays a customer in a pub scene. Eddie was a pub landlord in east London.The DVD contains commentary from Peter Ferdinando who plays Tony and features Mug, a short film made by Gerard Johnson a few years before he made Tony. It also features a shorter earlier version of Tony again starring Peter Ferdinando and Lucy Flack who also appears in Mug.

Tony watches action films on video cassette. He lives alone in a vertical street; a tower block in run down Dalston, a suburb of 'Broken Britain's' North London. Tony has not worked for over thirty years, and has no wish to do so. After all, he does have so much to do at home. This is at least what Tony tells his job centre adviser. This scene happens around the middle of the film, where we have already discovered that Tony has a penchant for murdering people in his flat. In protracted sequences throughout the film, we see Tony rigorously separate the body parts into their smallest components; wrapping them in newspaper and placed in corner-shop blue plastic bags for disposal. Whenever we follow Tony as he walks the streets, he is always carrying blue plastic bags. Tony has a lot of body parts to dump in the Thames.Gerard Johnson's feature debut is a gritty serial killer movie, - clearly inspired by real-life British serial killer, Dennis Nilson (the Muswell Hill Murderer) - that follows a man completely alienated from his surroundings. He is Nilson in the early 1980's. He only watches action videos from that decade. Like Nilson, Tony (played with all the sweaty awkwardness needed for the character, by Peter Ferdinando) prefers to keep the bodies for company. He talks to them as they are placed on the sofa, or laid out in bed. Tony's life is a cycle of seconds of murder; hours of company; much time dismembering; and a long, perpetual task of bit-by-bit disposal.Tony picks up men in gay bars. He persuades a couple of smack-heads to go back to his flat. A boy of 10 years goes missing on the estate. A large, stereotypical, aggressive working-class man targets Tony as an obvious target: His appearance could resemble that Daily Mirror image of the bespectacled, moustachiod loner, that so associated with a pederast.Despite the grim, and inescapable bleakness of the film, director Johnson, finds room to add humour. The film resembles, stylistically, that of John McNaughton's excellently unresolved Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). The same concept carries into this film. The life- goes-on attitude. Tony is a ghost in the narrative. Yes, he is the protagonist. But he only exists in his insular world. The space he has dwelt in for "ages". Outside he drifts through the busy streets unnoticed; he fades into obscurity amongst regular people. Anonymously carrying plastic bags of internal organs.The film is self consciously 1970's in its approach; both stylistically, and thematically. in the latter of those two, '70's horror cinema tended to the ambiguity left by rare conclusions. For the first, this is low budget cinema. However, this is certainly made with style; it is highly competent filmmaking. We know immediately from the start of the film that the filmmakers influences in the golden-years-of-exploitation- cinema are a part of this picture; the typeface of the movie title 'Tony' are reminiscent of the title cards for the American exploitationers this really wants to homage. It is an incredibly well made contribution to the likes of Jeff Gillen and Allan Ormsby's Deranged (1974). However, Tony does not highlight the grotesque, like in much of the films it might be 'riffing' on. Johnson's film looks like it could possibly fit into the working-class visuals of a kitchen sink drama - only through the eyes of a cold- hearted killer. Although, whilst we are repelled by Tony, do we also feel pathos for a character so out of touch with the world, that he will try and persuade a Chinese man selling DVDs on the street to sell him outmoded video cassettes? Tony is entirely disenfranchised. Because of this separation from reality, Tony is able to pass unseen. Or perhaps, like Mary Harron's American Psycho (2000), this is all imagined. (By the way, I don't believe at all that this was all imagined; that's just how I ended it.)www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Tony is a dark character study focusing on a week in the life of Tony, a British serial killer living in a London tower block. A socially awkward individual, Tony kills because it seems to be his only way to resolve difficult social situations. It is easier for him to commit murder than to relate to other people.To a certain extent, the film's examination of Tony resembles the 1980s film, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Peter Ferdinando's performance rivals that of Michael Rooker in the latter film, giving Tony depth and sympathy. However, the film has a class context that sets it apart from the earlier work.Paralleling Tony's bleak existence is the blighted section of London he lives in. Walking aimlessly through poor neighborhoods and interacting with their inhabitants, Tony's behavior comes to seem an understandable reaction to his social environment. Indeed, many of the people he encounters come across as even more savage in their own ways, whether through overt aggression or bureaucratic indifference.The film does have some flaws that prevent it from being a true classic. There are a number of scenes dedicated to establishing Tony's lack of social skills, which at times come across as overkill. Given that the film originated as a short film, these scenes seem like filler meant to bring it to feature length. Nevertheless, this British film is definitely worth a rent.

In Tony, the title character (played very convincingly by Peter Ferdinando) is a soft-spoken, middle-aged nerd who enjoys old action movies. He's severely withdrawn from the world, unable to speak or relate to others, and has never worked a job in his life. One other important fact about Tony is his penchant for murder. In fact, Tony murders on a regular basis, whether it's druggies, men he picks up at gay bars, etc. At a mere 75 minutes, Tony never strives to be complex or hard to follow, but instead a simple portrayal of a simple killer who inability to connect with the world causes him to outburst so easily on those who confuse or anger him. When a young boy goes missing in town, the father immediately assumes it's Tony's doing and we watch as everything in Tony's life comes dangerously close to unfolding. Like I said, the film is simple yet sophisticated enough to be enjoyed mostly by the smarter movie watcher. Those looking for quick release won't get it here at all, despite the film's overly short runtime. A lot have compared it to the English answer to American classic Henry; Portrait of a Serial Killer and I couldn't agree more. It's dark, gritty, and covered in gloom, yet you somehow feel for this monstrous character. Overall, Tony is an excellent watch, one of the better "horror" films I've seen this year. Good film.