An ultra-low budget movie by the director of Rise of the Footsoldier.
The basic plot involves an international assassin-turned-drug runner, Charles Toll; who is hunted in North America and left for dead by a maverick cop, Ed. When Toll resurfaces in the UK and kills something like 38 armed response police escaping a hotel with his girlfriend, the British send for Ed. Ed then chases Toll down and kills lots of people on the way.
Pretty simple plot, but it would still be entertaining if handled well.
Unfortunately, it's not handled well. The actors are wooden. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural (there are a few gems, although I'm not sure they were meant to be). The continuity is absolutely terrible. Every so often, some wierd subliminal-style shots are overlaid or cut-in, but there are hardly any of them and they seem to come at no set points and end up just being plain odd and a little confusing. New characters are introduced and killed before you even work out who they are or what they're doing (the 'party' scene is particularly bad for this). There's far too much fake blood flying around (it seems the director's mantra was 'when in doubt, throw more fake blood on screen').
So, overall, it's pretty rubbish. Then you find out it was made for around £50,000 and featured the director's friends and family and their homes as sets. It then seems more of a case of them having fun and shooting a movie for no reason, with no care given to how it turned out. It feels like an amateur movie, apart from it's length. So, suddenly, most of it's problems seem forgivable. But, then you discover that Primer only cost $7,000 to make, and suddenly those problems are back and adding up to a poor movie.
+ 2 for low budget effort.
- 1 for Primer having a far lower budget and being brilliant.
My rating: 2.3 / 10
IMDB rating: 6.2 / 10
Running time: 105 mins
IMDB link
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