My Defense of A Long Way Down (2014)

Sunday “Bad” Movies can mean many things. Typically, it means movies that aren’t quite as well put together as others. Movies that people consider bad for one reason or another. It could be the acting. It could be the editing. It could be the writing. There just has to be some sort of perception that the movie is bad. I’ll toss it in the schedule, give it a watch, and hopefully be able to mine something good out of it. Very few bad movies don’t have some sort of redeeming quality to them. Very few bad movies can’t teach the viewers about something movie or thematically related.

There are times, however, when I schedule something because the consensus is that it’s bad, then I watch it and discover it’s actually pretty good. I’ll go into the movie after looking at the low scores it held on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. I never only go by Rotten Tomatoes because it could get a 0% based on everyone rating it between 50% and 59%. Anyway, it might look like the movie is bad. Then I watch it and think “What were those people thinking?” That’s what happened this week. This is my defense of A Long Way Down.

Nick Hornby released the novel A Long Way Down in 2005. In the 2014 film adaptation, four people met on New Year’s Eve at the most popular suicide spot in London. Martin Sharp (Pierce Brosnan) was a disgraced television presenter. Jess Crichton (Imogen Poots) was a self-destructive young woman who felt like nobody truly loved her. Maureen Thompson (Toni Collette) never felt like she was alive, while J.J. Maguire (Aaron Paul) had cancer and didn’t want to live through the disease. They each had their reasons to die, but together would find reasons to live.

Now, before I get into my full defense of A Long Way Down, I have to mention the two things that might cause people to be wary of checking it out. First is the subject matter. It was a movie about a group of people who wanted to kill themselves by jumping off a tall building. They decided not to do it on New Year’s Eve, and made a pact to wait until Valentine’s Day. An hour and a half plus movie about people contemplating suicide, through the use of comedic beats might not be what people want to see.

The other thing was why Martin Sharp was a disgraced morning talk show host. He was a statutory rapist. A Long Way Down began with Martin mentioning how he thought the girl had been in her twenties, but he had been wrong. He didn’t regret having sex with her, and even at points openly spoke about it as a sad but funny anecdote, he only regretted that he hadn’t confirmed that she was of age. Yeah, he was kind of reprehensible. He even lashed out at a point in the movie that he only wanted to commit suicide because he had been humiliated. It wasn’t that he had done what he did. It was that people, rightfully, treated him bad for doing it. I can understand how that character could put people off from wanting to watch the movie.

If you can get past the idea of a dark comedy about suicide, and the despicable backstory of Martin Sharp, you might find that A Long Way Down was actually a pretty good movie. It was definitely better than its reputation might have you believe. The subject matter wasn’t a detractor from the personal stories being told. If anything, it helped to make the emotional core of the movie even stronger. It added new layers to what would usually be basic storylines. Particularly, it would add to the stories of Jess, Maureen, and J.J. Their stories wouldn’t have had nearly as much impact without the underlining suicidal theme.

Take Jess, for starters. A Long Way Down began with Jess being the most enthusiastic about jumping off the building. She ran to the edge multiple times while everyone else attempted to hold her back. As they left the building, she ran away and overdosed at a club. Luckily, the other three characters got her to a hospital in time to save her life. It was from this point on that the layers to her character were revealed. Jess wanted connections. She wanted real connections. She wanted so much to end her life because she thought nobody truly cared about her. Meeting the others on the roof brought new connections into her life. They were connections who cared for her. They were the bonds she had desired for so long, filling the emptiness she had always felt. Those connections also helped mend other connections she had. Attempted suicide underlined all of it because she thought nobody would care if she was gone. The people she met in that moment would be the ones who cared the most.

Maureen’s A Long Way Down story was also pushed along by the thoughts of suicide and death. Her motivation for being on that roof on that New Year’s Eve had been that she felt like she had never lived. So much of her life had been focused on taking care of her son, who had a severe disability. None of her time was devoted to herself because it was always devoted to her son. To rid herself of the strange feeling that brought her onto the rooftop, Maureen had to learn to live. Luckily, she met the other three main characters.

J.J.’s story was more tied into suicide than any of the others. Maureen and Jess had stories that began with attempted suicide, but they were about other things. J.J. was the character who was the most affected by suicidal thoughts. It wouldn’t take long to discover he had lied about having cancer. It was also easy to see that he was a troubled person. He wasn’t troubled in a way where he would physically lash out at other people. It was an inward, emotional trouble underpinned by suicidal thoughts. He was the most self-dangerous character and, also, the most compelling.

The stories alone wouldn’t be enough to make A Long Way Down a good movie. They might make a compelling book. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t read Hornby’s source material. For the movie to work as well as it did, there needed to be good performances. Each of the four actors playing the core four characters filled the roles well. They got lost in the characters when they could have simply felt like actors playing characters. Some of their performances felt like other characters they played through their career, but those performances still worked well for the material, playing on the strengths of each actor. The charisma of Brosnan, the energy of Poots, the darkness of Paul, and the… Well, Toni Collette is strong with almost anything. They were each at the top of their game in the movie, which made all the storylines work like gangbusters. Whatever a gangbuster is.

The supporting cast got in on things, too. Solid performances from Sam Neill as Jess’s father, Rosamund Pike as a television host, Tuppence Middleton as an undercover reporter, and Joe Cole as Jess’s ex-friend helped elevate the world-building beyond the main four characters. The relationship between Jess and her father was important to her growth. It wouldn’t have worked nearly as well without Neill’s performance. The reporter came into the movie at a crucial point for J.J. that put everything on the path to the finale. That performance needed to be believable. Middleton sold it. Rosamund Pike sold one of the most painful moments in the movie through her driven, digging demeanor. And then there was Cole, whose performance fit perfectly into Jess’s world as she was introduced. They were the perfect performances to bring everything together.

Finally, there was the way the story was told. There were five perspectives throughout the movie. Each character got their perspective, and then there was the perspective of the group as a whole. The perspectives weren’t woven together thought A Long Way Down. Most stories with multiple main characters are told by going back and forth through their perspectives. A Long Way Down didn’t have that back and forth. Instead, it began with Martin’s perspective. That was how everyone was introduced. The beginning of the movie up until they signed their Valentine’s Day suicide pact was his point of view. The movie would then transition to Jess, then J.J., and finally Maureen, before opening up to all of their perspectives. The stories built on one another, happening in chronological sequence. The Jess stuff happened before the J.J. stuff, which happened before Maureen’s story. It took the growth of one to cause the growth of another to cause the growth of the rest.

The brilliance of this storytelling was that it showed how not everyone could overcome their demons at the same time. Martin just needed a moment to think. That moment helped Jess, who needed the friendships that were built from that thought. Her friendship helped J.J. open up. That stronger bond helped Maureen learn to live. One thing couldn’t happen without the things that happened before. Maureen couldn’t have been helped if J.J. hadn’t been helped. J.J. couldn’t be helped if Jess hadn’t been helped. And Jess couldn’t be helped without Martin collecting himself. Seeing each of the stories play out showcased how each character needed the others to help them find what they needed in their lives. That shared perspective at the end highlighted how they were stronger with each other in their lives than apart.

So, to recap my defense of A Long Way Down, I think it’s a good movie for three main reasons. For one, the suicide story didn’t detract from things. It helped make the various storylines more impactful. For two, the performances were strong throughout, from both the leads and the supporting actors. Everyone felt true to the world that was built, and the leads played to their acting strengths. And finally, the structure of the storytelling showed how not everyone can be healed in the same way. Some people require more support than others, which was really shown by how the storylines weren’t interwoven, instead being told sequentially, in chronological order. It was all to show how tough suicide can be to overcome and how things can get better with the right people in your life. As dysfunctional as those connections might be.

A Long Way Down was one of those movies I scheduled based on a bad reputation. I had seen that there were negative reviews. I looked at the aggregators and saw low numbers. I hadn’t heard anyone really talking about it at all. It was a forgotten movie. But when I finally saw it, I realized it was better than I, or most people, had given it credit for. It was a good movie. At least, I thought it was. You might have a different idea.

Sunday “Bad” Movies is a blog based on finding the good in bad movies. Or, at the very least, find some sort of lesson to learn from those movies. Every once in a while, however, I make a scheduling mistake. I’ll schedule a good movie by accident. It doesn’t happen too often. When it does, however, I might discover something I enjoy. I guess that still fits into the idea of finding something good among the bad. So there’s that.

It’s time to finish off this post with a few notes after that terrible closing paragraph:

• Pierce Brosnan and Rosamund Pike were featured in A Long Way Down. They were both previously in Die Another Day (week 153).
• The only other returning actor in A Long Way Down was Chris Wilson, who had a background role in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (week 510).
• Have you seen A Long Way Down? What did you think? Am I completely off in my defense of the movie? Tell me all about it in the comments.
• I’m always looking for suggestions about what I should watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks. If there are any suggestions you have, drop them in the comments. I’ll find them.
• Make sure to keep up with Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram.
• We’re into a new year and I’ve got some new movies to check out for more new posts. Is that enough new for you? I haven’t seen a Steven Seagal movie since, I think, the first hundred posts. It’s time to change that. I’m going to check out Above the Law for next week’s post. I hope to see you when I put that post up.