HARVEY GREENFIELD IS RUNNING LATE

There’s a particular kind of magic that only British indie cinema seems capable of conjuring—a scrappy ingenuity, a wit sharpened by everyday absurdities, and an emotional honesty that refuses to be tidied up. Harvey Greenfield Is Running Late, Jonnie Howard’s micro-budget feature, belongs firmly in that tradition. What it manages to do, on the leanest of means, is both exhausting and exhilarating: a comedy that runs breathlessly through the chaos of modern life, while pausing just long enough to ask why some of us find it impossible to simply say “no.”

At its centre is Harvey Greenfield, played with astonishing precision and vulnerability by Paul Richards, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Harvey is a man caught in the gravitational pull of his own politeness, a pathological people-pleaser who can’t refuse anyone—even strangers. He’s the kind of character who’d describe himself as “an ugly Hugh Grant” before listing off a dozen imaginary illnesses, not out of melodrama but out of habit. Richards captures this contradiction beautifully: Harvey is equal parts pitiful, endearing, infuriating and oddly heroic. You laugh at him, despair with him, and, in the same breath, want to scoop him up in a hug.

Howard and Richards have designed the film like a relentless sprint. The pacing rarely allows a breath, mirroring the anxiety that defines Harvey’s existence. Every phone call, every demand, every absurd chance encounter is one more item stacked precariously on his day: a boss (Alan Hay, relishing his role as a pompous tyrant) demanding total devotion, a mother weaponising guilt to coax him to visit, a mechanic hawking a car that will obviously collapse on first ignition, and a girlfriend (Liz Barker, understated and perfectly grounded) who just wants reliability in place of excuses. Add to that funerals for strangers, weddings for near-strangers, and, at one point, a pig transaction gone awry, and you get a picture of a man perpetually drowning in obligations, almost all of them absurd.

And yet, what could have been a mere sketch-stretched-to-feature becomes something far richer. Howard directs with wit and invention, smashing the fourth wall to pieces as Harvey addresses us directly, confessing and commiserating in a way that makes the audience his unwilling confidant. This device, far from a gimmick, opens a channel of intimacy—Harvey isn’t just running late; he’s desperately running from himself, from the silence that would force him to confront the emptiness and fear beneath his frantic “yeses.”

The comedy lands with remarkable consistency. Some of the jokes are broad and gleefully silly, others dry and subtle, and many are hidden in the throwaway details of performance and staging. But running alongside the humour is a surprising tenderness. The film quietly charts Harvey’s trajectory from anxious child to overwhelmed adult, sketching the way people-pleasing becomes less a quirk than a symptom of deeper fractures. In these moments, the film emerges as a sly but heartfelt reflection on the invisible weight of mental health struggles.

The ensemble cast is a treasure trove of British character talent: Annette Badland, Norman Lovett, the late Ewen MacIntosh, even a scene-stealing Dave Benson Phillips. Each brings their own eccentricity, colouring Harvey’s world with just enough surreal texture to make the whole thing teeter between the plausible and the dreamlike. Yet it’s Richards’ show throughout, his embodiment of Harvey so complete that it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. To make a character simultaneously this infuriating and this lovable is no small feat, and Richards makes it look effortless.

What lingers, after the laughter subsides, is a surprisingly poignant aftertaste. Harvey Greenfield Is Running Late is not merely a comedy of errors but a plea for compassion—for those who, out of fear, anxiety, or habit, can’t stop running until they collapse. It is a love letter to all the awkward, overstretched, indecisive souls who can’t seem to get a grip on the simplest things, and in doing so, it becomes quietly profound.

Chaotic, hilarious, and unexpectedly moving, this film is a testament to what micro-budget cinema can achieve when led by conviction, humour, and a deep well of humanity. Harvey may be running late, but his story arrives right on time.