MOVIE REVIEWS : THE WINNING WAYS OF ‘NO SURRENDER’

The Sicilians say that revenge is a dish best served cold. But for the Irish Protestant and Catholic pensioners who populate “No Surrender” (at the Monica 4-Plex), revenge is a full-course meal.

If the hors d’oeuvres don’t provoke a brawl, then a bloody battle over dessert will do just fine. What gives this wonderfully barbed British black comedy its acidic edge is the way it takes the rancor of these aging foes and plays it as farce.

The setting is New Year’s Eve at the Charleston Club, a bedraggled dive in the equally run-down city of Liverpool. It’s the first night on the job for the club’s new manager, Mike (Michael Angelis). From the start we can tell something’s very amiss, especially when Mike sees the club owner and his thugs thrashing a suspected thief--a thief who turns out to be the previous manager. Mike’s predecessor has left him with “two coach loads of 70-year-old religious maniacs looking for a fight,” spicing up the volatile brew by asking the Catholics to come dressed for a costume ball.

The Protestants are led by Billy McRacken (Ray McAnally), a renowned old Ulster gunman who’s grown weary of the violence, but still can’t bring himself to speak to his daughter’s Catholic husband. The fighting Irish-Catholic contingent, which includes a widow dressed as Superman and a pair of old geezers outfitted as Laurel and Hardy, have their own spirited leader, a blind ex-boxer named Paddy Burke (James Ellis), who arrives in emerald trunks, his gloves already in place. There are dozens of other finely etched characters on hand, but Burke and McRacken are the real focus: two fierce old pit bulls straining at the tether.

Long before midnight, the club has become a surreal, circuslike shambles. The entertainment (also booked by Mike’s predecessor) includes an inept comic and a punk band bashing out a ditty called “We’re Going to Die.” After the rockers flee the stage, the rival factions of oldsters croon simultaneous versions of “Ave Maria” and “The Sash.” Mike the manager is an isle of sanity in this sea of drunken loonies. He refers to himself as “a nobody,” but he’s a nobody with noble aims: He’d like to bring order, perhaps even a little peaceful coexistence, to all this chaos.

Somehow, director Peter Smith and scenarist Alan Bleasdale, a London playwright, keep the film on a reasonably stable footing, though even the most alert moviegoer will have problems sorting out the bewildering array of subplots. The pace is also a bit plodding at first, but Bleasdale deftly laces the script with subtle plot hints and character sketches that pay off down the line, although American moviegoers, accustomed to clear-cut distinctions between comedy and tragedy, might find the abrupt mood shifts hard to follow. This is a farce, but much of its laughter has a strangled sound, and the outlandish humor is often sandwiched between violence and sorrow.

The film makers often lampoon the oldsters’ infirmities and inflamed passions, but they never patronize their elders. This raucous, over-the-hill gang is too full of malicious energy for that. Their wounds may be deep, but their spirit is indomitable. When a pair of Catholic widows spot a handsome Protestant gent across the club, one woman admits to a long-held attraction, even while noting that the fellow once bashed in her husband’s skull. But when the old widow tries to recall his name, she admits, “I only knew him as Hatchet Head.”

This is the kind of movie worth seeing for the performances alone. Joanne Whalley is wonderful as a tart-tongued waitress while Bernard Hill is a delight as a bouncer who’s so hilariously dense you can almost hear the wind whistling through his ears (there’s even a deft cameo by Elvis Costello as a nervous magician with a sick rabbit under his top hat). Perhaps the most moving performance of all comes from Ray McAnally, a veteran Dublin stage actor, who plays the world-weary Protestant battler, his jowly visage scarred by his sour memories of hatred.

This is a film that will make you cackle and cringe, often at the same time. “No Surrender” (MPAA-rated: R for its profanity and violence) finds much of its humor in the ugly invective of religious fanaticism. But its powerful punch comes straight from the heart.