At the film’s core is the relationship between drug-addled fop Jones (Leo Gregory) and working class builder Frank Thorogood (Paddy Considine) – who reportedly confessed to murdering Jones in 1969 on his deathbed. It’s an exciting proposition, and the film promised to be an intense psychodrama played out against the rich backdrop of Sixties rock ‘n’ roll decadence.
Woolley, a force majeure in the British film industry thanks to his producer’s credits on movies like Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Backbeat and 24-7, is here making his debut behind the camera. And while Stoned is competent enough, it also feels unforgivably lazy in places.
A key problem lies in the characterisations of Jones and Thorogood. They’re both distinctly unlikeable people – Jones is vain, insecure, passive-aggressive while Thorogood comes over as a near-autistic sociopath. At no point does Woolley’s film attempt to explain how they came to be like this – nor, crucially, does it explore what it is that drew them together in the first place. Mutual dependence? Latent homosexuality? Gregory gamely grabs Jones’ effete hedonism but Considine – so impressive in A Room For Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes and My Summer Of Love – fails to bring his usual, screen-burning intensity to bear here.
Woolley mounts the film brilliantly in the muted, grainy stock of the time – and there’s sly references to Kenneth Anger, Performance and Blow-Up in there, too. But there’s something dreadfully sloppy about soundtracking Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” over an acid trip sequence. The film is noticeably bereft of Stones music, Woolley making do with a smattering of covers.
Much of the narrative exposition is shoddy, too. There’s little on screen to indicate why Jones’ girlfriend Anita Pallenberg (Monet Mazur) would particularly seek solace in the arms of Keith Richards (Ben Whishaw, last seen as the hapless Pingu in Nathan Barley), for instance.
It’s certainly not Carry On Brian, but neither does it deliver as an unflinching expose of rock ‘n’ roll murder.
Stoned is released in the UK in November
East Sussex
Having gone through the time period following the Stones from their days at the Green Man on Blackheath where it cost 25 pence to see them in the Jazz room on a Sunday evening 12 and a half pence some Saturdays for Manfred Mann.
Jones was as portrayed in the clips of the film that I have seen to date. The rise of the group weeks later to the Catford south London concert room that was to be the notorious Mr Smiths where the Crays shootout took place years or so later, cost just £1 and that included the admission to the Johny Grey clud downstairs I remember the crowd hanging off the wall lights,a far cry from the intimate days weeks earlier on the heath.
The following time of their rise and Jones fired for being a git and upsetting the Jager Richards power base was an accident about to happen.
Through all this Jones was the mixture of aloof and latent persona as shown but yes the clips do show a slight lack of the inner truth
Allen
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