Jack Averty: Bigger is better when it comes to watching hard-hitting films

To put it into context for those who have yet to see the best viral video to hit the internet it shows a older man – presumed Brexit voter – absolutely incandescent with rage and attempting a citizen’s arrest on a family.

We’re not quite sure what has sparked former BBC producer Fergus Beeley’s anger, but the video does hint it might have something to do with some alleged bad driving by the family taking the barrage of insults.

Unfamiliar with how a citizen’s arrest works and on what grounds, Mr Beeley is furiously shouting and jabbing his finger at people in the car and telling them they are under arrest – including an 11-year-old.

We have all watched enough episodes of The Bill to understand this is not how an arrest works, citizen’s or otherwise.

Furious that his ‘arrest’ is being ignored, Mr Beeley then absolutely loses the plot.

He tells the father of the family, yet to utter a word by this point and presumably doing everything he can not to wet himself with laughter, to ‘put your hands on the car and get ready to die’.

Said by anyone else, this would be a truly terrifying phrase that understandably would have people fearing for their lives. However, screamed at the top of his lungs by a bloke who used to work with David Attenborough and looks a bit like Owen Paterson is eye-wateringly funny.

Mr Beeley looked and sounded like a man who wanted a return to Britain’s glory days, when people really had something to fight about.

It’s rather ironic then that this occured in the samwe week that thousands of us flocked to cinemas all round the country to watch one of the Britain’s finest moments – the evacuation of Dunkirk.

However, if you thought Mr Beeley was angry, wait until you see how much the cinema costs these days.

Upon arrival you get the choice of 2D, 3D, IMAX and a new brilliant creation 4DX.

4DX is where, for the price of a small house, you can go and get the ‘full immersive experience’.

A nice idea to some, but it would be more cost efficient just to ring up Mr Beeley and ask him to follow through on his threats. At least that way you will be laughing hysterically when you meet your demise.

The film itself is a masterpiece, utterly fantastic. You may not have been in 4DX and left the cinema with ringing in your ears from all the bombs going off, but even in the ‘cheap’ seats it truly feels like you are there. You really get a sense that you were stuck on the beach with Harry Styles, or soaring through the sky with Tom Hardy, or sailing the sea with Cillian Murphy.

The constant ticking puts you on the verge of a nervous breakdown and when Nimrod comes blaring out in time with the arrival of the British civilian fleet, you will be hard-pressed not to swell with patriotic pride and almost understand why Mr Beeley fancies a return to the 1940s.

Leaving the cinema, looking like shellshocked soldiers that had just escaped Dunkirk, we pass those buying tickets, all jovial, with no idea what was about to hit them – especially if they had to remortgage their house and stump up for 4DX.

Brilliance

But the reason the brilliance of Dunkirk has been desperately shoehorned in with the hysterics of Mr Beeley is to look at how the cinema is shunned in favour of short clips on the internet.

One is unscripted, raw and uncut, the other has been in the making for years and had an army working on it.

It’s safe to say Mr Beeley was not planning his rise to viral stardom.

One is also free and accessible to anyone with access to the internet, while the other one costs an arm and a leg (here I go again with the 4DX thing). There is a generation that will scour sites such as YouTube to find the funniest and most popular videos for entertainment. Why pay for the cinema when you can watch Mr Beeley try to make a citizen’s arrest on an 11-year-old and then tell the kid’s dad to put his ‘hands on the car and get ready to die’? Who needs to go and see the next Die Hard if you can watch that kind of stuff for free.

But cinema plays with our emotions in a way that no video clip on the internet can. Sure the latter can give us a cheap easy laugh and a pick-me-up, but it’s the former that can make you feel things you didn’t know you could ever feel; it drags you emotionally from pillar to post, providing tear-jerking lows and euphoric highs.

Cinema may have its flaws – extortionate prices for one – but it’s still fantastic entertainment.

Perhaps it’s time we swallowed our pride and, for the right films, went back to the big screen.