Protein review – gym-obsessed serial killer bites off more than he can chew
'It's basic detective work,' says veteran smalltown cop Stanton (Charles Dale), trying to justify pressurising a lead about her love life. 'Very fucking basic,' says Patch (Andrea Hall), a London colleague who has come to the sticks because of a possible connection with a grisly serial killer. That's the narky style of this ramshackle but moreish Welsh thriller, which takes place in the coke-sniffing milieu of endemic poverty and petty criminality, under ubiquitous sallow street lighting, in which everyone's looking for an out.
Patch is right about the serial killer: drifter Sion (Craig Russell) has pitched up in town and blags a cleaning job at a local gym. A traumatised ex-squaddie with an inferiority complex, he takes offence at the group of hoodlums lording it over the machines. So he hammers in the skull of bouncer Dwayne (Kai Owen) and stores some choice morsels in a freezer; an extra protein source for his iron-pumping. But Sion is oblivious to Dwayne having recently cut in on a drug deal with rival Albanian gangsters – so his seemingly brutal murder threatens to kick off a turf war.
The title suggests some kind of exposé or The Substance-style satire on modern gym-culture toxicity. And with the meatshake-quaffing Sion, and an ambient whiff of stale testosterone among most of the cast, it is to some extent. But the protagonist – for whom we're ladled out a facile backstory but who is also off the screen much of the time – is too marooned within the film to fully bring that aspect home.
More nutritious are the ratty comic exchanges at which debut director Tony Burke excels, like a cokehead Mike Leigh. From five guys arguing about guns in a Yaris, to Stanton and Patch expeditiously shaking down suspects, the repartee not only effectively conveys the diminished expectations in this seedy bearpit, but also squeezes out unexpected vulnerability for the actors to capitalise on. The standouts are Dale, as the ironclad stalwart hiding tragedy, Hall with her personable cynicism, and Steve Meo as the would-be playas' whipping boy, spiralling out into uproarious panic. Too diffuse and unfocused it may be, but Protein has a hotline into great British bathos.
Protein is released in UK cinemas from 13 June, and available on digital platforms from 14 July.
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