User Reviews

Tony is a dark character study focusing on a week in the life of Tony, a British serial killer living in a London tower block. A socially awkward individual, Tony kills because it seems to be his only way to resolve difficult social situations. It is easier for him to commit murder than to relate to other people.

To a certain extent, the film's examination of Tony resembles the 1980s film, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Peter Ferdinando's performance rivals that of Michael Rooker in the latter film, giving Tony depth and sympathy. However, the film has a class context that sets it apart from the earlier work.

Paralleling Tony's bleak existence is the blighted section of London he lives in. Walking aimlessly through poor neighborhoods and interacting with their inhabitants, Tony's behavior comes to seem an understandable reaction to his social environment. Indeed, many of the people he encounters come across as even more savage in their own ways, whether through overt aggression or bureaucratic indifference.

The film does have some flaws that prevent it from being a true classic. There are a number of scenes dedicated to establishing Tony's lack of social skills, which at times come across as overkill. Given that the film originated as a short film, these scenes seem like filler meant to bring it to feature length. Nevertheless, this British film is definitely worth a rent.

Tony is a look at a serial killer and their everyday life. Tony is awkward, very awkward, and this leads to him being ignored or mistreated by the majority of people. Tony manages to gather sympathy throughout the film as he just so happens to encounter a lot of scummy, horrible people. These people generate no sympathy for themselves, but not in a bad way. The film seems to suggest that we should all just be decent human beings. There's no harm in saying "hello" or having rational discussions. It's the hate and negativity aimed at Tony that fuels his actions. Peter Ferdinando gives a brilliant performance and carries Tony, realistically, through a wide range of scenarios, from unprovoked arguments, to awkward job interviews. A little, but well executed film.

This is a fantastic film. Well shot, well written, well edited, well acted,effective soundtrack...and short enough to leave you wanting more.

I cant say enough good about this film, as its one of those films that is so good that it takes on a life of its own. As all great art, this is not a 'horror film' but a sociological reflection of our times.

The story introduces us to a lonely man who lives by himself and tries to form relationships with the vagrants and oddball characters but due to his inability to communicate properly, which we read into as shyness, years of repression, denial he ends up killing them.

Humour is used as a temporary escape valve from the horror we see, and actually, the comedy is a real highlight of this dark piece, as we are challenged to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. This is nothing new, but it added to the humanity of the piece.

To be honest, there are a few things that I have to criticize for this piece but these more loving embellishments than anything else. For example, the film could be longer as we are left hanging at the end and wanting more.without giving the game away, if tony had succeeded in his goals, and then given due punishment, it would have created the next layer of depth that the film is surely deserving.Also small symbolic indicators, without being too blatant would have added to revealing his past, that even if the film chose not to express, could add clues hinting at the person that Tony once was.Also could have done some scenes of him eating alone.

However with respect to the directors artistic choices, I believe leaving certain issues unresolved allows the viewer to imagine and ponder more about an epidemic that wont go away, provoking deeper contemplation. So in this respect, it is an intelligent artistic decision which is in hindsight, to be respected.

Like i said, great films are the ones that have a life of their own, not dictated by comparisons although comparisons are necessary to explain them, once you see the film, it goes far beyond that. this is a character study of a creature in pain. A product of its environment and even a sociological reflection of the dysfunction of its environment. As all good art does, makes us reflect and think in the here and now. And what we as people, society , generation, have become. Definitive stuff.

Tony is a sad and lonely serial killer who appears to have listened a bit too closely to the message Jeffrey Dahmer was disseminating, about killing em to keep em near. He is that which nature abhors - a vacuum. No wife, no children, no job - if it weren't for his apartment he inhabits and pays rent for you wouldn't even know he was there. This is a slow, close look at a slow sad life. We don't get too close, not that it would be desirable once we see the people down there in the dregs for him to interact with. Aside from the junkies and hos that people his world, even his employment agent and potential boss are scum. The only bright spot I noticed was his neighbor lady come to borrow a band-aid. Only she saw Tony. Only she talked to him and listened back. It's enough to make you cry until he kills another of the scum in his life. Then it is to laugh. Kidding aside, I found this movie to be good to great, and emotionally full.

There are Two Underdogs Connected to this Brit-Indie, the Title Character and the Writer Director. Gerard Johnson made this Ultra-Low-Budget Movie for about as much as a Six Pack and a Bag of Pretzels Using a Cinema Verite Style that most Probably came from the Inherent Lack of Funds Available.

It Served Him Well as this is about as Gritty and Down to Earth as Filmmaking Gets. It is Minimalism Materialized. The Movie has a Washed Out Look from Novices having a Go at the Most Obvious of Cinema Low Lifes: The Serial Killer.

The Acting is Above Par for this Get Together of Film Geeks with an Outstanding Lead Performance that Crosses a Neo-Nazi and a Nerd. The Only Time that Character Tony Manages any Equilibrium is when He is Doing the Deed. There He is in Full Control and Manages the Kill and the Clean Up with a Precision that He might Consider Honing into a Productive and Useful Profession. But He is Obviously too Far Gone.

This is one of those Disturbing Films Void of Frills and in its Docu Style it can do Nothing but be Unsettling and Unnerving. For that it Succeeds and Fans of Street Cinema, those Movies made with Nothing More than the Enthusiasm and Energy of a Film School Project and a Will to Draw Attention to Itself with Little Help from Anyone not Involved in the Production.

Overall Worth a Watch for those Willing to Suspend Depth and Details for Visceral Visions from Aspiring Newcomers with Talent in Desperate Need of some Support.

A small budget, short film, well acted by all, the film puts the story across as a 'Fly On The Wall' real life drama and is really put across so very well, that this kind of person: Low life,no connections,loner could so easily do this kind of crime and get away with it, very easy without being ever getting caught.

Certain 'so called' reviewers have had a go at this gem of a Lottery financed film and if the truth be known these people have never lived in the East End of London, I do and have all my life , Tony is shot in the area and the surrounding neighbouring areas where I live.

There are literally hundreds of these kind of weird, lonely, strange and some dangerous psychos walking daily in the streets of East London, who knows? with so many "Have You Seen This Missing Person" posters all year round amounting to many people disappearing never to be found? This Tony character could easily be a real person.

Friends and other people who have seen the film, have all said the same as myself, make a sequel the film is brilliant...

TONY is yet another film in a genre that has been done many times before and, in my opinion, doesn't really offer anything new. The central character, Tony, is a socially awkward loner who is obsessed with action films. He also has a weird physical appearance. Those traits are essentially what make his character, and he's really the only character in the film. Everyone else just exists in his world. What I did like about the film were the few moments in which Peter Ferdinando, who gives an excellent performance, hints at something deeper in Tony's psyche. One scene in front of a mirror was particularly chilling, in much the same way as similar scenes in NIGHTCRAWLER and FOXCATCHER. I also liked the haunting, minimalistic score which adequately conveyed Tony's loneliness, and reminded me somewhat of Philip Glass (whose music I love). Beyond that, it seemed like a typical serial killer film done on a low budget. The cinematography, while digital, was still done well and the camera-work was pretty good too. My major issue with the film is how thinly written it is, such that its 72 minute running time almost feels too long. I guess I just wanted a little more substance. It probably would have worked better as a short film now that I think about it. For what it's worth, the film isn't bad it's just not particularly great either. Peter Ferdinando's creepy performance is probably the best reason for seeing this.

This is a bit of a dud, to be honest. The sort of film in love with the phrase "The Banality of Evil" without appreciating that the phrase has become, in itself, banal.

Tony wants to be a social-realist horror (sort of Mike Leigh meets Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), but can't really escape some of the more reactionary trappings of the genre; there's some near-homophobic stuff in here, and the people Tony murders in the main sort of 'had it coming', a'la Hannibal Lector. While those he doesn't (like his bizarrely trusting neighbour) should run a mile from him, but instead take this freakish-looking gent for granted. Meanwhile, the much-vaunted Matt Johnson soundtrack comprises little more than a few polite piano noodlings. Hardly 'Soul Mining.'

Though not especially distinguished, 1989's Dennis Nilsen biopic 'Cold Light of Day', achieves the whole notion of the 'murderous blank' with a greater degree of effectiveness and subtlety. For, as another killer, Mark David Chapman, might say, via JD Salinger, Tony's a bit of "a phony".

Meet Tony, perhaps the most understated and naturalistic Serial Killer ever put to the cinema screen...

I saw this film at Manchester's Grimm Up North festival and was completely taken by surprise. Not knowing quite what to expect, the film grabbed me from the first minute with a deliciously dark, creep and comic turn by Peter Ferdinando as the titular character. Made with an intelligence rarely seen in this end of the genre scale, Tony is fascinating from beginning to end, and offers a great social comment on London's outsiders, and how society treats the 'invisible' amongst us.

Working with a low-budget, the filmmakers have made a classic film here, with every element of the film's production worth a shout. The direction from Gerard Johnson is superb, the acting from all concerned is spot on, the cinematography lends the film a suitably dark and grimy feel and the music, by Matt Johnson from The The fame, matches the visuals perfectly without ever detracting or pulling you out of the film's journey.

But it's Peter Ferdinando who really stands out here, creating a character that deserves to take pride of place next to other famous filmic serial killers such as Henry, Patrick Bateman, Dr Lecter and Ezra Cobb from Deranged, with a pitch-perfect tone that would, in all honesty, creep you out if you ever met him on the street.

I hear the film is due a release in the UK in February, and thoroughly recommend you make the effort to see it. UK low-budget film-making of the highest order...

This isn't a bells and whistles serial killer movie, it's a lot more subtle than that. It's purposefully slow and "gritty" (overused word for low budget movies) and could very easily be about your lonely neighbour, that Uncle you hardly see or the local weirdo that kids torment.

It's very short and worth a watch.

Tony watches action films on video cassette. He lives alone in a vertical street; a tower block in run down Dalston, a suburb of 'Broken Britain's' North London. Tony has not worked for over thirty years, and has no wish to do so. After all, he does have so much to do at home. This is at least what Tony tells his job centre adviser. This scene happens around the middle of the film, where we have already discovered that Tony has a penchant for murdering people in his flat. In protracted sequences throughout the film, we see Tony rigorously separate the body parts into their smallest components; wrapping them in newspaper and placed in corner-shop blue plastic bags for disposal. Whenever we follow Tony as he walks the streets, he is always carrying blue plastic bags. Tony has a lot of body parts to dump in the Thames.

Gerard Johnson's feature debut is a gritty serial killer movie, - clearly inspired by real-life British serial killer, Dennis Nilson (the Muswell Hill Murderer) - that follows a man completely alienated from his surroundings. He is Nilson in the early 1980's. He only watches action videos from that decade. Like Nilson, Tony (played with all the sweaty awkwardness needed for the character, by Peter Ferdinando) prefers to keep the bodies for company. He talks to them as they are placed on the sofa, or laid out in bed. Tony's life is a cycle of seconds of murder; hours of company; much time dismembering; and a long, perpetual task of bit-by-bit disposal.

Tony picks up men in gay bars. He persuades a couple of smack-heads to go back to his flat. A boy of 10 years goes missing on the estate. A large, stereotypical, aggressive working-class man targets Tony as an obvious target: His appearance could resemble that Daily Mirror image of the bespectacled, moustachiod loner, that so associated with a pederast.

Despite the grim, and inescapable bleakness of the film, director Johnson, finds room to add humour. The film resembles, stylistically, that of John McNaughton's excellently unresolved Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). The same concept carries into this film. The life- goes-on attitude. Tony is a ghost in the narrative. Yes, he is the protagonist. But he only exists in his insular world. The space he has dwelt in for "ages". Outside he drifts through the busy streets unnoticed; he fades into obscurity amongst regular people. Anonymously carrying plastic bags of internal organs.

The film is self consciously 1970's in its approach; both stylistically, and thematically. in the latter of those two, '70's horror cinema tended to the ambiguity left by rare conclusions. For the first, this is low budget cinema. However, this is certainly made with style; it is highly competent filmmaking. We know immediately from the start of the film that the filmmakers influences in the golden-years-of-exploitation- cinema are a part of this picture; the typeface of the movie title 'Tony' are reminiscent of the title cards for the American exploitationers this really wants to homage. It is an incredibly well made contribution to the likes of Jeff Gillen and Allan Ormsby's Deranged (1974). However, Tony does not highlight the grotesque, like in much of the films it might be 'riffing' on.

Johnson's film looks like it could possibly fit into the working-class visuals of a kitchen sink drama - only through the eyes of a cold- hearted killer. Although, whilst we are repelled by Tony, do we also feel pathos for a character so out of touch with the world, that he will try and persuade a Chinese man selling DVDs on the street to sell him outmoded video cassettes? Tony is entirely disenfranchised. Because of this separation from reality, Tony is able to pass unseen. Or perhaps, like Mary Harron's American Psycho (2000), this is all imagined. (By the way, I don't believe at all that this was all imagined; that's just how I ended it.)

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It's grim, it's pointless and there's no real narrative yet, surprisingly, it still works.

We are invited to spend a small amount of time watching the life of Tony, a lonely serial killer. The feel of an inner city council estate is spot on and sense of isolation and self neglect is conveyed with fine detail.

Things do happen but like I said before there is no real narrative. I can't quite place it but for some reason you still watch to the end. It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea so watch with an open mind and don't expect any questions to be answered.

I enjoyed this film. Nice shots of London and a great soundtrack. Feels more like a short documentary about a lonely middle aged man called Tony than a movie. The funniest scene for me is when Tony is attending a job interview and the sunbed shop owner tells him the hours are 6am to 8pm. Bloody hell! Tony is then seen holding a placard up for the shop in the middle of a busy street but soon ditches that to visit a tawdry prostitute he can't afford. By the way, what's that movie starring Gary Busey that Tony tells the detective he watched before having a bath and going to bed? It's got to be worth a watch!

Tony, written by the director and based on his 2005 short film, is a great example of the disease that "lets the bad guys win", which is plaguing independent films nowadays. In this vain attempt to be edgy, the film follows around socially-inept Tony as he encounters nothing but hostility and gives back nihlistic hate and misdirected retribution. His encounters are far too convenient, although, one would expect someone like Tony to focus solely on moments like these. Tied with the filmmakers' apparent laziness in thinking-through the central character, the film shows an incredibly unrealistic approach to victim struggles. On a similar note, the film claims to be "social realism" yet there is not a shred of human truth in any facet of this film. Furthermore, Tony is peppered with far too many red herrings, which throw the viewer around; leading us in one giant loop of illogic. Shameless-ly (pun on Exec. Producer Paul Abbott intended) exploitative, it provides no answers to so many questions that should have been passing thoughts on the road to a more crafted story. What ever happened to the bad guy going up in a ball of White Heat(1949) making us feel at least a shred of sympathy for them? S

This movie takes a small peek into the life of a middle-aged, lonely, action-movie obsessed serial killer named Tony.

Tony's life is dull. No job, no love-life, no real anything. He's just a human being that is going through the motions. Or so it would seem from the outside looking in. The movie Tony focuses on a killer that gets away with killing because that person, the type of person that Tony exemplifies, is never focused on.

One of the posters for this movie has a tag-line that hangs under the seemingly unaware and blood-smattered Tony, and says: It's Always the Quiet Ones. I can't say for sure if that's always the case or not, but it's something that we all think. That man looming alone under that tree. That guy with the blank stare who came out of nowhere to tell you what he thought of the store across the street. The ones that have their own agendas, but are never noticed…that is, until it's too late.

Tony is a well-thought out serial killer film that focuses on the character, the killer. And for it to work, the acting and writing not only have to be good, they should be realistic; and they were. Not only was our Tony played with style and intelligence, but every secondary character in the movie was also played well. The vibe of the movie and overall idea being displayed never faltered, and we were left with a study of a serial killer, that at one point, I began to feel pity for. Gerard Johnson, the director, needs to be applauded for the movies' fruition.

A rather short feature film that was chock full of fine performances and ideas. If you're in the mood for a different approach to the sub-genre of serial killers, I would definitely recommend you give this a shot. This film and the amazing, Angst, would make for a great serial-killer double feature.

This movie is categorized as a thriller. After watching it, it is first and foremost a social drama. It is about serious mental disorders, loneliness and alienation from living in a big city. Next, it becomes a thriller by the protagonist's deeds. Definitely a quiet and sordid movie. Tragic outcome of being lost in a big city without anyone caring or getting involved in any way.

A thriller centered on a serial killer in a rundown London suburb... Hilarity ensues.

While this film has the standard societal problems of drug use, prostitution and more, it differs in that our protagonist (if you can call him that) is the most socially awkward person imaginable. He prefers to cuddle with prostitutes rather than have sex, and he may never have even touched a beer. Watching him in these environments is painful.

I had expected this to be like "Evil Ed", but with action films rather than horror. That is certainly not the case. The idea that he watches a lot of action films is quite played down and not nearly as important as I was lead to believe. The horror aspects in general are minor... this is not a typical serial killer film. At all.

Is it good? Maybe, maybe not. I found it rather boring and as I said, painful. Maybe I went into it expecting the wrong thing and that ruined it for me. But it just never worked.

Conflicted about this film. It is well-acted especially by Peter Ferdinando who's spot-on as the emotionally-stunted soft-spoken psychopath Tony. Perhaps if I didn't read the positively glowing reviews for the movie, I would've ended up liking this lil slice-of-(serial killer) life film a tad more. It's not nearly as good as "Henry" a masterpiece that its often compared to and going into this one expecting it to be up on that level will likely be disappointed. However if you approach it blindly, and can get past the admittedly thick accents, then any fan of the sub-genre will still appreciate this one.