XENITH

It had to happen. Here’s a terribly topical Bankers-Are-Bad piece from acclaimed writer-director Dominic Savage, swiftly followed as I go to press by yet another (a glossier, more playful take in The Last Days of Lehmann Brothers). As such, I’d expect a piece like this to date badly at best, at worst sacrifice decent writing, and character development for cheap moralising. Such is the quality, Freefall lingers in the memory.

The plot’s a slight thing – Freefall follows three men through boom and bust, each offering a different perspective on the worldwide financial crisis, and the perils of lending and borrowing beyond means. Though it might aim for balance, it sides firmly with the everyman, powerfully played by Joseph Mawle (an actor of slow-burn intensity, brilliant as a potential murderer in Soundproof), his wife (Anna Maxwell-Martin, Bleak House), and kids, manipulated into signing away a contented family life by the promise of more.

Irishman Aiden Gillen (Queer as Folk UK, Lorna Doone) gets to strut around London in well-cut designer togs and air his natural accent as a venal, coke-snorting stockbroker. The new model red-brace-wearing Thatcherite Wanker, who features in many a 1980s-set UK drama, appears here in new skin, without the balm of nostalgia. He’s king of the trading floor but divorced and attempting to repair a non relationship with his bitter teenage daughter – this a shameless, half-hearted attempt to humanise a character most will loathe on principle, before he gets his inevitable comeuppance.

His immaculate, clever girlfriend as played by Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day, Pride and Prejudice) grows tired of being a convenience, and his increasing isolation is superbly rendered, in a conversation with a colleague (Riz Ahmed, as seen in the equally topical, and excellent Britz) a revealing stream of inanities that feels more like simultaneous monologue. That pesky Rich-People-Are-Bad notion, or if not bad, soulless and emotionally stunted, helpfully symbolised by lots of cool, muted tracking shots of the Square Mile’s glass and steel, by a chilly, impersonal office sex scene – on a desk, by a very large backlit window, as you do. (I feel deprived. Seems I’ve missed the genuine office experience.)

Dominic Cooper plays the middleman (The History Boys, Mamma Mia, Starter for Ten, The Duchess). An always watchable actor whose range and roles to date comprise Cocky Bastard, Sexy Bastard, or Cocky Sexy Bastard, lusted after by men and women alike, proves perfectly cast. His character and his shrill girlfriend do, as expected, come out on top. A gifted salesman a hair’s breadth from con man, he’s no time for soul-searching.

Freefall does trip over the cliché of a frantic trading floor filled with panicked, gesticulating traders as phones ring off the hook when it all starts to go wrong, but redeems itself by using minimal incidental music to heighten the realism, and leaving the most shocking moments to the viewer’s imagination.

Aside from the reach for subtlety and committed performances, Freefall’s best feature is the ultra-realistic, well-choreographed dialogue. Characters possess distinctive voices and tics, repeat themselves, interrupt each other, stumble, and stammer just enough to feel true to life, without dragging the action or lightening Freefall’s emotional heft. Freefall is a skilled, thoughtful take on recent events that avoids preaching – a risk of any such true-story disaster-drama. Though it doesn’t go into the complexities of the financial crisis, it has time for a pleasingly cynical jab at the nascent glut of ethical companies offering to assuage our collective guilt for a price.

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