There are some actors who will only ever be associated with one role. Despite his best efforts in follow-up shows like A Touch of Frost, David Jason will always be best known for his role as Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses.
Before that, though, he had a few smaller cinematic roles, with The Odd Job being the last of his film appearances before donning the infamous fur coat. In a brand-new Blu-ray release from Severin Films, it’s clear to see how the film catapulted him to notoriety – and how funny it is nearly five decades later. That said, it also has the feeling of missed opportunity.
While Jason is the front and centre in the marketing, The Odd Job is in many ways a Graham Chapman opus. Co-written by and starring the Monty Python star one year before Life of Brian, he plays Arthur. He’s a fairly nondescript and piteous man whose girlfriend Fiona (Diana Quick) suddenly ups sticks and leaves him, leaving him forlorn.
His solution? To hire a short, fool-hardy, but very much committed hitman (Jason) to take him out. What the hitman doesn’t know, however, is that Arthur and his partner recouple very shortly after, leaving him with a target who actually now wants to live, thank you very much.
It’s a simple enough plot (based on a Ronnie Barker sketch that Chapman optioned), but The Odd Job takes you by surprise in how leisurely paced its 90-minute runtime is. It approaches the halfway mark before the debacle comes to fruition, but it’s never anything less than entertaining during that time. That’s mostly thanks to Chapman’s performance, which is brimming with just the right balance of self-deprecation balanced with pomposity.
He’s great at making Arthur’s ignorance the butt of the joke, but also knows when to toe the line and show just how heartbroken the man is. His direct comedic style is all over the film, and it’s often laugh-out-loud funny as a result. Be prepared for sight gags aplenty, cringe humour that Alan Partridge himself would wince at, and a surprisingly tender dose of human emotion.
By the time he arrives, Jason’s hitman (never given a name) comes in as an ideal foil; it’s hard not to trace some of Robin Williams’ screen presence to the wackiness on display here. He’s like a ceaselessly buzzing sprite that crops up and never relents, as omnipresent as he is dedicated to killing Arthur. His assassination attempts are never taken too seriously, and despite his bumbling efforts he never comes across as a tangible threat, so it’s all fairly light-hearted.
What ensues is a cat-and-mouse chase that gets increasingly ridiculous, but loses its bite as The Odd Job enters its third act. Arthur flees across a London left behind in time; the kind of nostalgic Britain that films like 28 Years Later unpick. It’s a timeless conceit in a timeless setting, and in that regard it certainly works.
The issue is a lack of focus once the pieces are all in play – Chapman, co-writer Bernard McKenna, and director Peter Medak never know quite where to take the narrative. Rather than starting broad and becoming tighter, more claustrophobic, forcing a confrontation between the two, The Odd Job expands its remit towards the end and loses its focus as a result.
The film introduces a barrage of admittedly interesting supporting characters but doesn’t have the scope nor time to do much with them. It’s likely a case of the setup not having enough substance to sustain the runtime, but once you’ve seen David Jason get in a life-threatening predicament to take out his target, the novelty begins to wear thin.
The bloated second half will leave you wondering why The Odd Job took such a leisurely pace to begin with. Yes, we get to see plenty of Arthur’s regular life and his reaction to the breakup, but it leaves Medak throwing everything in the mix to scramble towards an (admittedly gutsy) conclusion. If the film started broader and gradually forced the characters into close proximity, the journey towards its ending would be a lot more engaging.
But of course, The Odd Job isn’t trying to be anything more than an entertaining way to kill 90 minutes – and at that, it definitely works. But with the calibre of comedic talent here, you’re left wondering whether a sharper focus could’ve elevated the film from decent to an all-timer of British comedy in the 1970s. As it is, though, The Odd Job is a riotous time – but it has the lingering feeling of wasted potential.
★★★
The Odd Job releases on Blu-ray from Severin Films on August 25, 2025.
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