The Undertaker review – Paul McGann offers buried feelings in shady period thriller
Paul McGann takes on extra business while Tara Fitzgerald brings sparkle to this low-key tale of a funeral director who gets mixed up with a local gangsterThis low-key thriller, set in the late 1950s-early 60s judging by the costumes, harks back to the regional British crime flicks of that period, the sort of movies where penny-stakes gangsters and spivs in shiny suits clash over who will control the ration-card black market. Writer-director Michael Wright clearly has a yen for this milieu and takes care to get the argot right in this tale of Arthur Morel (Paul McGann), a reticent funeral director who gets mixed up with local hoodlum Finlay (Roger Barclay) in a northern town. Finlay needs a bit of help burying the excess bodies his shady business generates, or “loose ends” as he describes them.It’s not immediately clear why Arthur agrees to take on this shady extra business, but perhaps it has something to do with his late brother who had a gambling habit that got him into trouble with
