The World's End - Film Review

*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for The World's End. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*

The work of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright has a certain fondness for drinking establishments.

The pub has previously been used as the escape from tedium (various episodes of Spaced), the preferred refuge from zombie attack (Shaun of the Dead) and  the place to shelter and conceive of a scheme to defeat a troupe of murdering loons (Hot Fuzz).

Here, the pub is the scene for two activities - the place to try and reconcile fragmented friendships, and equally, the place to stumble across and hide from evil creatures.

The story begins with the prologue of a night 5 young men celebrated the end of their school years in 1990 by taking on the quest of The Golden Mile - 12 pubs in their anonymous hometown of Newton Haven. In the end they called it quits after 9 with one of them laid by the wayside.

Some 23 years on and the gang are being bought back together, albeit not without some difficulty due to the events of the intervening years.

The driving force is former head boy Gary King (Pegg), who has become a washed up late 30-something. He leaves his therapy session in search of his old friends - Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine) and Andrew (Frost) - to try and actually complete The Golden Mile.

Although it takes persuasion - a lot of it in the case of Andrew, who got shot of Gary after an incident a few years after the night in question - the gang is re-united ahead of the trip.

Gary returns - in a vintage Ford Cortina that has been rebuilt - and collects his chums from the train station before driving to their town to begin the quest.

The problems quickly mount, starting with the "Starbuckisation", if you will, of the pubs. Fitting with modern day pubs, they all look alike. A surprising amount of pubs look and feel same as ever - indeed it takes a few before there's any change, and even then they have the same teak.

There's also the fragile dischord, which is played mainly for the bleak feel of friends falling apart rather than the comic effect. There's a few laughs hither and thither to keep things entertaining though, but it is mainly for the serious stakes.

At this point, it feels like a different place from the real thing. Oddly, Gary at times seems to resemble the villain from Men in Black 3, but years honing his acting on all manner of things means Pegg is approaching this in form and continues the streak. Frost is also doing well in his role, and it takes an interesting turn in pitting them as opposites rather than as friends at the start.

Its tricky to see what, if anything, can unite them. But then a force that binds them rocks up a few pubs down, just after Gary has been shunned by Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who was his one-night stand on the original Golden Mile day.

Here, a slightly-intoxicated Gary gets aggravated at a teen in the toilets has been ignoring him when a fight breaks out. The teen is superhuman, and it takes limb severing to defeat it. However this exposes the fact that the teen has blue ink instead of blood and a robotic anatomy.

Soon the gang has to fight the teen's friends - and the original one's headless, armless body. Surviving that, they decide the best thing to do is to carry on. Originally leaving was the plan but with Andrew deciding to jump back onto the booze wagon after 16 years teetotal by downing 5 vodka shots, they decide sticking around is the plan.

At the next pub, Sam bumps into them while out with friends and is duly made aware of the conspiracy when her friends are revealed to also be robots, thus with another drunk brawl.

The film at this point has a series of drunk brawls punctuated by funny lines and monologues. The arrival at disco-pub The Mermaid sees an intricate explanation of the conspiracy that the town's inhabitants are plugged into a vast alien network, which is spread by contact with human skin so the network can replicate the target's body form.

Not-so-coincidentally, at this time, three high school lovers of the original troupe are kissing them, playing and dancing with them, swallowing Andrew's wedding rings in one bizarre example.

The next pub is The Beehive, which sees a familiar face to Bond and ABBA fans explain in a remarkably cool voice the benefits of membership. It could be enough to persuade somebody to join in, and Oliver is suspiciously sympathetic with this. However this is taken to the point where its revealed what was suspected - when both Oliver and the familiar are taken out, they are revealed to be robots too. Only problem is they're but two amongst about another thousand robots.

The choreography has been handed to Jackie Chan's fight scenes director, who does an admirable job in making the fights. Coupled with Edgar Wright's direction and it is delightful to watch, even if it takes on the swerving-fight look so many films seem to prefer despite it's aggravating disorientation.

One particular scene of note during the brawl in the Beehive sees Gary still trying to drink his fight even while robots are trying to beat the shit out of him. That seems to be a measure of the man - the man who wants to be forever young in the words of Alphaville, in a society where things don't work this way. It's almost something for sympathy, as well want to re-live our younger days but don't have the capability - physical or time - to do so.

Saying that, its a bit too man-babyish - a "maybe" as put in a later scene - which just makes him look like a loser. Everyone has to grow up sometimes, and all that.

Still being pursued, the crawl unofficially (i.e. Gary is the only one still taking part) rocks up to its final destination.

Gary and Andrew has a genuinely moving moment in and amidst a bar brawl, before stumbling upon the conspiracy.

The alien vision sounds charming, but unfortunately, three drunks are not the people to talk too about it. The aliens, indeed, probably could be better off just infiltrating the political offices and persuading/forcing humanity to go along this way. There's probably a film in this somewhere.

The end coda is definitely different, revelling almost in the changed surroundings, as well as finding the humour, not least with the well-placed mention of a certain frozen dairy treat also found in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

This is not a film without some problems, not least given it does have a certain amount of indulgence in its sci-fi premises.

But on the whole, its still a delightful film, with funny moments, impressive action, good writing, an intriguing conspiracy idea and a well-formulated hangover so literally apocalyptic that it makes The Hangover movies look like a good night's sleep after a night in.

Its certainly impressive and if this is last orders for the Pegg-Frost-Wright team then its only fitting they've gone out with the best one of the lot.

4/5