Based on the novel by Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down (starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul) tells the story of four strangers who meet each other one New Year's Eve while attempting to commit suicide and decide to form a pact which will keep them all alive for the next six weeks, until Valentine's Day.
Martin (Brosnan) is a disgraced ex-TV personality, Maureen (Colette) is a single mother caring for a severely disabled son, Jess (Poots) is the rebellious youngest daughter of a politician whose elder sister disappeared two years ago, and JJ (Paul) is an ex-musician who now works as a pizza deliverer. The four of them end up on the same rooftop - each with individual plans to jump off - and, after an initially rocky introduction, develop a close friendship with each other, as well as becoming media sensations thanks to Martin and Jess's already high public profile. During the six weeks between the night they meet and the day their pact for staying alive runs out, they slowly come to learn about each other's lives, personal struggles and what drove them to that rooftop in the first place.
This movie provides examples of:
- Actor Allusion: JJ (played by Aaron Paul) tells the others that his reason for attempting suicide was learning that he had inoperable terminal cancer. It ultimately turns out he was lying about that though.
- Animal Motif: Birds, particularly with regards to JJ.
- Attention Whore: Martin certainly likes to present himself as being this. He spends most of his time espousing the virtues of being famous, at one point even seeming to have trouble deciding between wanting fame or his own children.
- Berserk Button: If you keep asking someone about their recently-disappeared sister, even when they ask you to stop, you can't really blame them for calling you a bitch on live TV...
- Martin also has one that appears to be anyone claiming to feel as humiliated as he does.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Martin's ex-co-host, Penny. While it's understandable wanting to take Martin down a peg or two, there really is no excuse for her pushing Jess on the issue of her sister's disappearance, especially when it's blatantly obvious how distressed Jess is becoming by it.
- Jess likes to pretend she's this, though it gradually becomes clear it's something of a defence mechanism.
- Black Comedy: This movie features a ton of it. The sequence where the four initially meet is about 10 minutes of this non-stop.
- Book Ends: The movie begins on New Year's Eve just before midnight and ends exactly one year later.
- The movie also starts with one of the four about to jump with the other three interrupting them and ends the same way - at the start, the one about to jump is Martin; by the end, it's JJ.
- Boring, but Practical: Maureen's entire character is basically this personified. She has very little time to spend on herself or having fun due to having to care for her son.
- Broken Bird: Pretty much all four of the main characters before the movie even starts, but Jess and JJ especially seem to become even more broken during the course of events (Jess repeatedly cracks under the strain of the media and her family situation and it becomes increasingly obvious that JJ suffers from severe depression).
- Bungled Suicide: Of a kind. None of them get further than standing on the edge of a rooftop but this concept provides the impetus of both the plot itself and the climax.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Jess often acts this way towards JJ - even going so far as to hide in his hotel bathroom when he brings a girl back to his room. Bear in mind that, while they're good friends by this point, there's still been no indication of romantic interest.
- Comically Missing the Point: It's Black Comedy, sure, but when JJ attempts to tell the others that he lied about having cancer, Maureen takes it to mean that he's been cured.
- Death Seeker: All of them to begin with. Supposedly, anyway. JJ truly seems to grow into this, however, swimming dangerously far out to sea and returning to the rooftop on the day the pact runs out.
- Deconstruction: Arguably of the idea that suicidal tendencies and/or severe depression are exclusively found in those with a Dark and Troubled Past or Tragic Backstory. Of the four main characters, it's the one we see with a constant steady job and a relatively normal history who becomes the most serious about committing suicide. JJ even lies initially to give himself a "better reason" for wanting to kill himself (telling the others that he's dying from cancer), rather than telling the truth which is that he can't explain exactly why he's tired of living, he just is.
- It also deconstructs the idea that preventing a suicide attempt will "cure" someone of depression and suicidal tendencies completely. Even in the optimistic epilogue, it's heavily implied that the pair at the greatest risk of depression and suicidal tendencies are still both having to take things one day at a time, despite their lives being better than they were at the start, and are explicitly stated to be in ongoing therapy.
- Driven to Suicide: The main four, or at least they believed they were at the start.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Of a type - the four were certainly left friendly with each other at the end of their first encounter, but it was the wake of them all becoming media sensations (and the unpleasantness that comes with that) that really cemented their friendship. And then, after it all falls apart again, it takes Maureen's scare over Matty and JJ attempting suicide a second time for them to become the True Companions they are in the epilogue.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble:
- Martin is Sanguine
- Maureen is Phlegmatic
- Jess is Choleric
- JJ is Melancholic
- Freudian Excuse: Jess has one as her reason for being on the rooftop: her father is a politician (and is hinted to be a fairly unpopular one) and her elder sister (and, it's implied, the parents' favourite) recently went missing.
- Heel Realisation: Both Martin and Jess' father seem to have an almost simultaneous one when they're watching Maureen with her son while her son is recovering from a heart attack. Both seem to be realising the neglect they've been displaying towards the good in their lives, in particular their own children.
- Humiliation Conga: Martin claims he went through one before the start of the movie - he slept with an underage girl, was divorced, spent time in prison and now no one will hire him.
- It's All About Me: Both Martin and Jess display this behaviour a lot, though Martin keeps it up for longer.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Martin
- Kick the Dog: JJ finally decides to tell the others that he lied about having cancer and that he (unknowingly) told a journalist private details about the four of them...so naturally Martin chooses that moment to fly off the handle at him, even causing the two of them to physically start fighting. It's implied that this sequence of events is part of what pushes JJ to attempt suicide again.
- Manly Tears: JJ is crying when the others eventually find him on the rooftop again.
- No Antagonist: As with a lot of Nick Hornby stories, the focus is on the individual characters' journeys to self-actualisation rather than a traditional protagonist vs antagonist story.
- Oh, Crap!: No one seems to think much of the fact that they can't get hold of JJ...until they realise it's Valentine's Day - aka the day the pact ends.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Martin's time in prison qualifies as this. Though seeing as how he was charged with sleeping with an underage girl, it's hardly surprising.
- Pair the Spares: Averted. It's hinted several times that just as JJ and Jess will get together by the end, Martin and Maureen will as well. While JJ and Jess do end up together, Martin and Maureen don't, remaining the Team Dad and Team Mom in name only.
- The Red Stapler: A harsh In-Universe example, but the rooftop that became famous in media as the quartet's attempted suicide spot is revealed to have become a suicide spot for at least 3 people within the six weeks of the story - including for a 15 year old boy.
- Refuge in Audacity: When the four decide to "take control of the story" in terms of what the media say about them, Jess spins a story to a journalist of an angel appearing to them all on the rooftop. An angel who subsequently ordered them not to jump. And who looked like Matt Damon. Naked. Naturally, this gains an awful lot of attention and, until the interview on Martin's old show, allows the attention to be drawn away from their private lives.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Said verbatim by JJ after he finds out that the girl he connected with (and slept with) while on holiday was actually a journalist fishing for information on the pact.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Martin.
- Smug Snake: Martin. At times. He gets better though.
- True Companions: The quartet develop into this - by the end, they're skyping each other on New Year's Eve and keeping each other up to date on their lives.
- The Unreveal: It's never said exactly what happened to Jess' sister. Or what happened to Matty's father.
-
You Look Familiar: Both Martin and JJ are on the receiving of this - while Martin's is often sincere, it's hinted that JJ's was not.
