CLAWFOOT (2023)

3 stars

The Movie Partnership. Digital Download. 23rd September

Janet (Francesca Eastwood, daughter of Clint Eastwood and Frances Fisher) is going about her daily life – cleaning, hoovering, cooking – in her huge house. She clearly has money. Her husband is away. So she is somewhat perplexed when a workman Leo (Milo Gibson, son of Mel) turns up on her doorstep insisting that her absent spouse has ordered a renovation on the bathroom to fit a new clawfoot bath. He even has signed paperwork, so she reluctantly allows him.

It is soon disrupting her domestic bliss, what with his assistant Sammy (Oliver Cooper), who doesn’t seem to understand boundaries and then Leo trying to help her cook bolognese. She is so angered by this intrusion she fantasises about smashing a glass over the workman’s head.

Then her friend Tasha (Olivia Culpo) turns up with her young son Darren. They have a yoga date. Her friend tells her she shouldn’t have let them in despite the signed order. Then Janet reveals to Tasha that her husband Evan seems to have gone.

She keeps fantasising about killing Leo – as he becomes increasingly annoying. Who is this interloper? Was he really hired by her husband? Tasha, who is a criminal attorney, advises her, ‘There are good criminals and there are good attorneys. A good criminal attorney is really just a good criminal’. This mantra will come in handy later as things get flipped on their head – though you may well have figured out some of it by the time secrets are revealed… a battle of wits ensues.

I have to say I enjoyed this amusing if somewhat throwaway thriller, which has a blackly comic outlook with bursts of bloody violence in it’s last third and some fun turns in the plot. Glossily directed by Michael Day, in his feature debut, this is buoyed by Eastwood and Culpo, who are clearly relishing their roles and Gibson makes for both a charming and creepy contractor. Undemanding entertainment.

Steve Kirkham