A Long Way Down

A Long Way Down reduces Nick Hornby’s novel of the same name to a series of smug self-help gestures. Director Pascal Chaumeil and screenwriter Jack Thorne plop us right into the middle of the inciting incident, in which a ruined talk show host, Martin, decides to jump off the top of a tall, snowy building on New Year’s Eve, only to be thwarted by the appearance of three other would-be suicide casualties: a mousy, naïve single mother, Maureen, an ostentatiously edgy party girl, Jess, and a mopey failed musician, JJ, who dubiously claims to be dying of brain cancer.