Keith Allen brings a comic’s readiness to disrupt a scene, but we prefer him when that energy is held in check. He is convincing as a villain who means business; less so when the film keeps asking him to be odd.
Fi1m perspective
In Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka (1991), Keith Allen and Simon McBurney play the assistants who nod together and finish sentences. The timing is clear, but so is the effort to be amusing. The synchronised nods made us laugh once, then the routine began to irritate us. Allen’s comic energy is useful, but here it is allowed to become a distraction. Soderbergh’s mystery is already short of dread, and this busy music-hall double act does little to help.
Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave (1994), with Allen as Hugo, is the more rewarding place to begin. Its three flatmates and money they should leave alone provide a brisk, nasty thriller, helped by performances that keep it entertaining. The early humour is sharper than the growing violence, a reservation worth keeping even when recommending the film. Allen has a supporting part, and the pleasure here belongs to the ensemble rather than to him alone. For Allen, it was a breakthrough, followed by another Boyle supporting role as the dealer in Trainspotting (1996).
Those Boyle parts sit between his alternative-comedy beginnings and the later television villains. As the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood (2006–2009), and as John Cooper in The Pembrokeshire Murders (2021), he is effective when the intensity is controlled. The threatening authority suits him. These are useful roles for an actor whose rawness can otherwise encourage a film to keep pushing for another eccentric flourish.
We would not ask him to abandon comedy; the fault in Kafka is the persistence of the routine, not the fact that he is funny. What he needs is a director who knows when the audience has understood the joke, or registered the threat. We prefer the briskness of Shallow Grave, though that film gives him only a supporting part. Start there for the film; try Robin Hood for a longer acquaintance with the actor.
Biography
Keith Allen is a Welsh actor, comedian, musician and writer. Born on 2 September 1953 in Gorseinon, West Glamorgan, he began performing in the late 1970s and appeared in early episodes of the Channel 4 series The Comic Strip Presents....
His film roles include Hugo in Shallow Grave (1994), the Dealer in Trainspotting (1996), Mr Marlish in The Others (2001), Roger Ames in 24 Hour Party People (2002), Terry in Eddie the Eagle (2016) and Charles in Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). He has also appeared in television series such as Black Books, Midsomer Murders and Death in Paradise.
Allen is the brother of actor and director Kevin Allen, and the father of singer Lily Allen and actor Alfie Allen.
