Director: Edgar Wright
Story: Edgar Wright
Camera: Bill Pope
Studio: Relativity Media
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Running time: 109 minutes
The title The World’s End denotes two things: the terrible, horrible demise of humankind and the English suburban pub where a man named Gary plans to conclude a twelve-pub (one pint per establishment) odyssey in triumph. The aim is to go back to his hometown of Newton Haven and commemorate a similar, aborted trek that happened twenty-odd years ago, when Gary and four mates were boisterous punks on the brink of manhood.
The others, Andy, Steven, Oliver, and Peter have careers and families, but for Gary, the manhood thing hasn’t quite worked out. Drinking his way to the World’s End will be his revolt against time and soul-draining conformity, a ringing declaration of existential freedom though somewhat undermined by his childlike self-centeredness and raging alcoholism.
Gary would be a pathetic figure, a doomed con man in the age of Eugene O’Neill, AA-bound in our therapeutic era, if The World’s End were directed by anyone other than Edgar Wright. For Wright, Gary is a peculiar combination of right and wrong. Mostly wrong but tilting toward wrightness, I mean, rightness — insofar as he susses out sinister changes in old Newton Haven. He’s a funny combination of wanker and warrior. Uproarious, in fact.
This review originally ran in the August 19, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.
Link: http://www.vulture.com
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