The Whip

An overall watchable movie with its strong and weak points. First, it is an enjoyable story that can make you think and flows easily. It unfolds nicely and in a slow fashion with explanations to help guide it along. These explanations can easily transfer accross to our current political system, giving a real world feel that can be seen in our own lives in some aspect. On the weak points, it becomes obvious at a very early stage that this movie was made on an extremely small tight budget, but as long as you can see past that, then you should enjoy the movie. If you appreciate small indy films, then it's worth a watch.

A thought provoking and fun film.

The Whip is an independent feature that follows Sadie Baxter, played by Shin Denovan, who takes matters into her own hands when the threat of the passing a new bill will affect her sister on disability. She enlists the help of others and their minds go to work to devise a plan to steal a "blackmail" book.

The film is well acted, well written and well thought out. It is a fun journey with intense moments of will they/won't they. There are beautiful shots of the city too.

In the end, The Whip is an engaging story with likable characters and a fun movie watching experience.

Michael Harrington MP is discouraged with the state of politics and spin and is a pretty convincing character with a nice turn around from selling the party line to airing his true feelings. Sadie the lead character is perfect for the worn out sister health carer role with some pretty solid acting. Multiple aerial shots break up the scenes and don't really get repetitive, adding some good transitions. The Whip himself is a classic bad guy but not too much of an archetype but we recognize him to be the villain pretty quickly without any unnecessary exposition.

The story focuses pretty heavily on social inequality and the bad guy politicians are obviously the Conservatives (since they'd been in power the past decade or more) but the film doesn't overtly turn into a social action flick and stays along the Oceans 11 style heist.

The heist team of 4 occasionally seems a bit small (don't expect Oceans 12 or 13) and their planning room does seem a bit bare as we'd expect to see a lot more maps and notes to give the feel of a heist in planning but the acting carries the story over these minor bumps.

Into the actual heist the action moves along pretty quickly and while locations and sets are occasionally sparse (ok it's actually not possible to film inside Parliament!) it's hard to worry about it for long since the heist moves along at a swift pace along with a few good twists and turns.

Overall The Whip is an enjoyable film with a solid cast performance and a story that is just as believable (suspension of disbelief) as Danny Ocean and his crew.

The budget of this film must have been around £200. The CGI inside parliament is laughable-cartoonish figures moving like SIMS characters. It honestly feels like no real actors were ever in the UK; all exterior scenes look like they were shot in front of a green screen with mismatched lighting and flat color grading. The story is incoherent, with no explanation, buildup, or reason behind anything-just random scenes stitched together. Don't be fooled by the 7s and 8s in the reviews those are probably from the cast or crew. A cheap, confused digital mess that fails on every level and leaves you wondering why it was even made.

The Whip critiques social inequality, with the villains clearly representing the entrenched political elite, but it doesn't turn preachy, instead sticking to a cleverly thought out heist plot

Once the heist begins, the action picks up quickly, with tight pacing and a few twists that keep things engaging. Although some sets feel minimal-understandable given the challenges of filming Parliament-the story moves swiftly enough to keep viewers absorbed. Overall, The Whip is an entertaining film with a strong cast and a story that's just as believable as any Ocean's caper.

Highly recommended and shows what can be done with an indie budget and a great idea.