Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry

Christie Malry leads a dull life in West London, living with his terminally ill mother and working in an office job that drains him. He distracts himself by indulging violent fantasies in which he threatens his manager with a shotgun. These moods set the tone for his later attempt to balance life through a personal code of revenge.

At Bernie's suggestion, Christie signs up for a night class in accountancy where he encounters Fra Luca Pacioli's ideas on double-entry bookkeeping. The class introduces him to the theory that every debit must be balanced by a credit, shaping his worldview. He begins to see life through financial terms.

Christie resigns from his unfulfilling job to pursue his new study path. Soon after, his friend Bernie is killed in a vehicle collision, removing a stabilizing influence in his life. The event pushes Christie deeper into his ledger-driven sense of cause and effect.

Interspersed with the main plot, scenes in Renaissance Milan show Fra Luca Pacioli teaching accounting to the court of Ludovico Sforza, while Leonardo da Vinci struggles with church interference. These vignettes frame the movie with the idea of accounting as a way to measure power and consequence.

As he studies, Christie learns that debits must be offset by credits, and begins to wonder how this principle could apply to his own life. He contemplates who would 'credit' his mother's cancer or his own suffering. The ledger becomes a running philosophy for his revenge.

Christie takes a job at Tapper's chocolate factory where he befriends Headlam, an eccentric colleague. The new environment provides material for his later 'balances' and his sense of being wronged by society. He starts connecting everyday grievances to the ledger of debt and credit.

During this period Christie enters a relationship with Carol, a local butcher's shop customer. The personal relationship gives him a human connection as he tests how far his new philosophy can justify cruelty. The mix of tenderness and vengeance begins to blur for him.

Christie begins with small acts to balance 'debited' wrongs, such as keying a car and damaging an off-license window. He also discards letters of complaint that anger him at work, framing these as debits to be canceled by later credits. The acts mark the start of his shift from fantasy to action.

Christie voices threats to the authorities, calling the police to claim he planted a bomb in Leicester Square. When the Foreign Secretary dies, he phones again to claim responsibility, triggering a chain of political reactions. The real perpetrator is unknown, and the government begins to suspect a broader attack while pointing at Iraq.

Encouraged by extremist manuals, Christie deploys a homemade bomb in a toy train and sends it through a tunnel near a tax office, causing the building to be damaged. The attack escalates his violence to a public terror event. Its immediate casualties and political fallout intensify ambition to balance debts with more drastic actions.

Christie escalates to a mass attack by poisoning a reservoir in West London, killing thousands and provoking international alarm. The government and media blame Iraq for the attack, leading to air strikes against the country. The scale of his 'revenge' grows beyond personal grievance.

Carol visits Christie in hospital after the bus bombing; he is mortally wounded. When Carol returns to his flat, she discovers the spare room full of documents detailing his plan to bomb the Houses of Parliament. It is revealed that he carried a bomb with the aim of attacking Parliament, but it exploded prematurely as the bus crossed Westminster Bridge.