I hadn't heard anything about this British Independent film before I saw it come up on TV last week. There are some very good Indie films out there and on the face of it this one looked pretty good, but more of that later. The setting is the urban environment of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.
A young man, Sean Macdonald, is down on his luck. He has lived in a flat (or apartment if you prefer) with his sister Alice since their mother passed away. Sean finds it hard to hold down a job and Alice has managed to get herself into a large amount of debt. Even Sean's best friend, Sam, cannot help him out. So when two men, Alistair Raskolnikov and Jamie Stewart offer him the chance to win enough money to pay off all of Alice's debts he finds himself with no option but to take them up on the offer. All he has to do is hide from the two of them from 9PM until 9AM the following morning. What follows is a dangerous game of cat and mouse in the back-streets of Edinburgh. I will not tell you who wins, but there are many twists and turns along the way.
What we end up with is a gritty and at times violent chase thriller with plenty of excitement and some interesting twists and turns. That's the first half of the movie. Unfortunately the second half does not live up to the promise of the first. There are decent performances from all of the leading cast, so honourable mentions go to Dougray Scott as Alistair Raskolnikov, Alastair Mackenzie as Jamie Stewart, James Anthony Pearson as Sean Macdonald, Liz White as Alice Kelley and Charles Mnene as Sam. Oh and there's also a brief scene with Karen Gillan, now starring along side Matt Smith on TV in Dr Who.
As I said the second half of the film is a bit of a let-down. A lot of the energy and tension built up in the first half is lost and I felt the film just petered out rather than building up to a big finish. So, in the end it was a bit disappointing although Dougray Scott is very menacing as the bad guy. I certainly wouldn't want to come across him on a dark night! Over all, a good first half let down buy a very average second
Not recommended.
My score: 5.3/10
