28 Weeks Later

Although hardly the central thrust of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, in teddy bear cab driver Frank, Brendan Gleeson was given room to essay an atypical sort of father figure, at least in terms of the genre he found himself inhabiting. Unusually, Frank was on the level. A good man who only ever wanted the best for the people he had taken under his charge. Despite Naomie Harris' Selena and Cillian Murphy's Jim being adults themselves it's Frank who assumes a higher level of responsibility for the group, be that driving the taxi in which they escape London or deferring the contents of Selena's medicine bag so he can stand guard all night, soothing restless sleepers. Despite his size and the strength inherent to that, Frank behaved with gentleness in basically every moment but the one where he foolheartedly barked at a pecking crow, sealing his doom. 

Physically and emotionally, Robert Carlyle's Don, a discarded viewpoint character in director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later, is the opposite. Slighter and happy to lord his all-access pass to the American shock-and-awe occupation of this partially reclaimed London, the brief time we spend with the conscious aspect of this man imparts a sense of someone flawed who is desperate to transmit importance. By the time he's contracted the long-dormant rage virus through a stolen kiss, Don might as well be a continuation of Francis Begbie, the wiry pub-fighter that Carlyle played in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. Although the kind of agency required to lead a film is lost when this disappointing father is transformed, Carlyle's magnetism demands that we linger on his actions, ascribing intent or recall to his agitated fog. 

Previous passes at these adrenaline soaked plague carriers prioritised shaky close-ups of their gnashing teeth or the torrents of blood that issue from every orifice. Carlyle though, and in fairness he's given more time onscreen to make a more lasting impression, takes his cues from the depressed chimpanzees seen in 28 Days Later's prologue. Don lingers, apparently plotting, and perhaps even directing his more mindless underlings. When it arrives his violence is overwhelmingly and absolutely destructive; be that balled fists clattering down on his wife's ruined face or sinking his crooked teeth into his youngest child's throat. The self-centredness (or good sense, depending on your perspective) that saw him flee when his wife found herself cornered in a seething cottage becomes the motivating factor for this character, one which curdles into a rolling familicide in which Don attacks, not to bring his loved ones closer into his contagious bosom, but to annihilate the less interesting characters who are gobbling up all of his screentime.