The late screen writing guru, Blake Snyder, came out with a book a few years ago, entitled 'Save the Cat'. He argued that a successful screenplay should contain a 'Save the Cat' moment at the beginning of a script, where the hero ingratiates his audience through a humanitarian gesture (it could involve helping a person or even an animal; hence the term, 'save the cat'). Newcomer writer/director Paddy Considine turns Snyder's advice on its head by offering up the opposite: a 'Kill the Dog' moment. Rather than feeling sympathy for the protagonist, Considine seeks to alienate the audience from his protagonist and is quite successful—I can't recall a film in recent memory where not only one, but two dogs are actually killed by the film's protagonist.
My pet peeve with 'independent' films these days, is that many protagonists don't like themselves. I call them 'sad sacks'. They're the type of characters that don't make for good drama, since their egos are weak, are always down on themselves, and have little or no charm. Considine's 'Tyrannosaur' goes a step further by offering up Joseph, the unemployed North England widower, who has a perpetual anger management problem. When he meets domestic violence victim, Hannah, who runs a charity shop, his harsh words toward her, are a very hard draught to take.
Nonetheless, there is an even more despicable character than Joseph and that's Hannah's husband, James, the ultimate abusive husband. James' character is designed to shock as he's seen returning home one night, intoxicated, and ends up urinating over Hannah while she sleeps. He later rapes her and she reveals that he's placed shards of glass in her vagina in the past, causing her to become infertile. While the domestic violence scenes are admittedly powerful, they are also wholly manipulative, since James is merely a one-dimensional monster. It would have been much more difficult for Considine to humanize his villain. This also holds true for his secondary characters, the skinheads who live across from Joseph, who are also perpetually angry, and are not above goading a dog to attack a child.
Considine attempts to humanize Joseph a bit as he ultimately softens up in his relation to Hannah. But in a cruel twist of fate-SPOILERS AHEAD-Hannah is jailed for murdering her abusive husband. While Joseph pays his respects at a funeral for a friend and visits Hannah in prison at film's end, this seems to indicate that he's 'cleaned up his act' somewhat; but is it enough to forgive him for past transgressions? Some would say, given his background, 'yes'. But to my mind, the horrible killing of the two dogs, is enough to reject Joseph out of hand. There are many people who had horrendous childhoods or difficult lives, who don't end up killing defenseless animals and subjecting others to continuous, psychotic outbursts. Considine seems to argue that characters like Joseph, should be given a 'free pass'; or perhaps people should be 'understanding', given the environment these characters come from.
There are occasional strong moments in 'Tyrannosaur', especially the aforementioned domestic violence scenes. But there were some characters who were too one-dimensional (such as James) and others like Joseph, who I was inclined to have little sympathy for. Only Olivia Colman's performance as the brutalized Hannah, proved to be compelling and saved the film from a total unpleasant aftertaste. With so many films on the market, investing oneself in Joseph's journey, is not one I would care to take again.
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