STORMY MONDAY (WIDESCREEN/FULL SCREEN)

Details

• Release Year: 1988
• Genre: Crime; Drama; Romance
• Plot: Writer-director Mike Figgis's remarkably understated first feature concerns a young man named Brendan (Sean Bean) who becomes involved in the seedy underworld politics of small Newcastle, England. Brendan takes a job at a local nightclub run by a man named Finney (Sting); he also meets Kate (Melanie Griffith), a cocktail waitress. Both Finney and Kate are struggling with an American business tycoon called Frank Cosmo (Tommy Lee Jones), who is trying to develop Newcastle at the expense of local businesses. Brendan's only half-knowledgeable involvement, the role of coincidence in shaping the ensuing action, the woman with a past--all the elements of film noir are at play here, accompanied by darkly lit streets and the reds and blues of nightclub neon. Figgis indulges his taste for jazz as well; he scored the film, and a jazz band even figures in the story. Bean and Griffith are believably entwined, but the standout in the cast is Sting, whose soulful Englishness is perfectly counterpoised with Jones's brash American bravado. In fact, STORMY MONDAY's interest in English culture versus American culture is an appropriate beginning for a director whose career would continue on both sides of the Atlantic
• Cast: Melanie Griffith; Tommy Lee Jones; Sting; Sean Bean; James Cosmo; Mark Long; Brian Lewis; Ying Tong John; Mick Hamer; Ian Hinchcliffe; Andrzej Borkowski; Caroline Hutchison; Les Wilde; Desmond Gill; Benny Graham; Derek Hoxby; Catherine Chevalier; Brendan P. Healy; Clive Curtis; Heathcote Williams; Fiona Sloman; Roderic Leigh; Dulice Liecier; Richard Hawley; Elizabeth M. Mason; Tony Bluto; Don Weller; Andrew Cleyndert; Mark Taylor; Nick Pyne; Nicholas Lumley; Cy Benson; Keith Edwards; Louise Hoskinson; Prunella Gee; Guy Manning; Alison Steadman; Peter Marshall; Czeslaw Grocholski; Dorota Zieciowska; Denny Ferguson; Bill Fellows; Al Matthews; Charlie Hart; Paul Jolly; Terry Day; Mel Davis; Ed Deane; Davey Payne; Darren Newton; Mike Figgis
• Director: Mike Figgis
• Runtime: 1:35
• Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment
• Media Format: movie