By Ben Bussey
Perhaps the greatest pleasure of the film festival experience is sitting down to watch a movie of which you have little to no advance knowledge, and wind up being taken totally unawares. Going into Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema for the Celluloid Screams screening of He Never Died, I basically knew nothing other than that it featured Henry Rollins in the lead – and, to be frank, that didn’t inspire huge confidence. Not wishing to badmouth Rollins, but for his many gifts, his repertoire as an actor has generally seemed somewhat limited: from his minor supporting role in Michael Mann’s Heat, to Wrong Turn 2, to Sons of Anarchy, Rollins has generally been stuck with roles which play first and foremost on his intimidating appearance, and frankly none of his roles had convinced me that he had it in him to be a leading man. However, within the first few scenes of He Never Died, I found it almost impossible to envisage anyone else in the role. Ageing, softly spoken, emotionally distant but – crucially – still a man that nobody in their right mind would want to mess with, the mysterious Jack fits Rollins to a T, and he’s the linchpin on which He Never Died maintains its careful balance between hard-hitting action, sophisticated storytelling and intelligent character work. On top of which – bloody hell, it’s funny.
Jack lives alone in a rudimentary inner city apartment. Seemingly retired, his life consists primarily of sleeping, eating at a local diner, playing bingo, and occasionally meeting with young medical student Jeremy (Booboo Stewart) for some unknown reason, but otherwise avoiding social interation as much as is humanly possible. Just what kind of life Jack lived before we don’t know, but despite his placid, taciturn nature he seems unable to avoid trouble, finding himself in the firing line of low-level gangsters. However, as these unfortunate young wannabes find out the hard way, Jack is not an easy guy to break. Beat him, stab him, even shoot him and he just brushes it off – and gives many times as much damage back. Taking any kind of revenge seems an impossibility, given that Jack doesn’t appear to care about anyone or anything – but then a spanner is thrown into the works by the sudden, unexpected appearance of his estranged 19 year old daughter Andrea (Jordan Todosey).
Of course, one of the tricky things about trying to review a movie which took you by surprise is that, as a reviewer, I’d like to do my best to retain that element of surprise for the uninitiated reader. Given that He Never Died has been screening at horror festivals, it will probably come as little surprise that there’s a supernatural basis for Jack’s extreme resilience, but I feel that it would be saying too much to elaborate any further than that. For this reason, I strongly advise not looking up the official trailer for He Never Died, because the people charged with promoting the film apparently have no qualms about spoiling pretty much everything, and as ever it saddens me to see how little marketing departments seem to care about maintaining the sense of mystery which the filmmakers have gone to pains building in their work. (Don’t worry, the clip embedded below doesn’t spoil anything, although it will give you a good sense of the film’s tone.)
How best to describe He Never Died, then? Well – as a tale of a disconnected loner living a humdrum existence, who’s suddenly forced to reconnect with the world when his long-lost daughter re-enters the picture and, concurrently, bad stuff starts happening, it’s kind of like Some Guy Who Kills People if Kevin Corrigan were a total hard-case (no offence, Kev). That said, where Corrigan’s Ken was troubled and emotionally stunted but ultimately a hard guy to dislike, there’s plenty about Rollins’ Jack that one might easily feel contemptuous about: he cares nothing for social niceties, doing his utmost to make all interaction as minimal as possible, and only intervening in the troubles of others when he serves to gain. This, of course, is where the bulk of the film’s humour comes from: and, just to reiterate, while He Never Died is a great action thriller with a wonderfully compelling fantastical element, its primary strength is that it’s really, really funny. I’ve been hitherto unfamiliar with He Never Died writer-director Jason Krawczyk, but his script and direction here are razor-sharp, and Rollins’ utterly deadpan delivery – and, of course, his physicality – really nail it to the wall.
So again, be careful what you watch or read about it beforehand, but most definitely make a point of seeing He Never Died at the earliest opportunity. Hugely entertaining, and end of year top 10 list material for certain.