Ruby Blue

Powerful, Technically Flawed, Wonderful Film
A low budget, independent film, set in a fishing village in Great Britain. The story is powerful and moving. Bob Hoskins, Josiane Balasko (a fairly well known actress in France), and the young red head girl, Jessica Stewart; all deliver wonderful performances.

This is a somewhat difficult story to describe without giving away much of the discovery in this film. The film looks at tolerance, prejudice, innocence, love, loss, friendship, kindness, and cruelty. All these emotions are wrapped up in marvelous lead characters.

As each charcter is introduced, I had a strong feeling of really loving that character. In the opening montage, Jack played by Bob Hoskins (Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Vista Series), in his younger days looked a little like Phil Collins), meets 4 teenagers sitting on the curb drinking and littering. He yells at them, one throws his beer can at Jack. Jack picks up the can and...

a very different, very rewarding film
Bob Hoskins is fantastic as Jack, a man who lost the will to live and can't figure out a way to carry on until he reaches out to the children of his community who need him. In keeping a neighborhood boy from trouble by allowing him to look after his pigeons and by babysitting a neighborhood girl, Jack restores his live to live and even finds love in the least likeliest of places. The film underscore what it means to be human - to be prosecuted at the same time as to do your own prosecuting, to have your own prejudices and to be prejudiced against, but most importantly, it teaches us that living our lives in the way we want, for our sake, is the best way to go about things.

Clink
As there is little useful information here about Jan Dunn's low budget melodrama, "Ruby Blue", I will throw out a few observations. The title is a reference to the racing pigeon that much of the story revolves around. Note that the title line in the promotional material incorporates a silhouette of the bird.

The promotional material would lead you to believe that this is a children's film with Bob Hoskins (Jack) and Jessica Stewart (Florrie) having a lot of "Bad Bascomb" (1946) moments in the tradition of Wallace Beery and Margaret O'Brien. They do have some scenes together, the most effective and least contrived segments of the film, but the cute-kid-as-a-redeemer is more side story than central focus. Despite the misleading marketing material there is little here that would appeal to children. Dunn's script is filled out with a host of tedious characters and subplots that detail the life of a depressed widower (Hopkins). Imagine Michelangelo Antonioni expanding the short...

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