Saxon

A refreshing UK offering that strikes a great balance between urban crime story and social comment tinged with just the right amount of comic relief. Terrific characters brought to life by a great cast. Slow at first but the tension that is created is well worth it - you are drawn down the often dark journey with hints of light allowed to shine. You just never know when and how. The sensational acting does not let the script down. One hopes that this first film of Greg Loftin will pave the way for new investment so that his next film does not have to be on such a shoe string budget. Not that it suffered from a low budget - the script and acting make up for it completely.

The Saxons were famous for North Sea piracy. In the 5th Century, there was an area of England known as 'litora Saxonica', owing either to the liability to Saxon attack or, as some think, the establishment of Saxon colonies there.

Saxon is also the name of a grim, modern-day council estate in London. A place where people are under constant threat from brutal bailiffs.

Fast Eddie just wants to get away. To Spain, preferably. But fresh out of the nick for killing a bailiff, trouble seems to follow him. Like the £500 he borrowed before going inside. It's now turned into £10,000. Loan shark Sammy removes one of Eddie's eyes. Just to keep things running smoothly. Now Eddie looks a bit of a prat with a bandage over one eye. Linda, an old sweetheart, wants nothing to do with him. But she needs a favour a too. So Eddie gets hired as her private detective to track down missing millionaire husband Kevin. A job that soon gets him into even more bother.

Saxon erupts onto the screen and it takes a little longer than usual to get comfy again in your seat. Is it a thriller? A comedy? A violent slice-of-life soap? Or a western, a fantasy-adventure, transported to an unlikely setting? Nothing seems to fit. Eddie has the air of a Don Quixote. He hasn't had the time to find his feet before trouble finds him. He tramps about uneasily. By turns, an object of fear and ridicule.

With such uncertain genre signals, one of the difficulties with Saxon is believing in the characters. They seem reality-challenged without being fully surreal. High production values could bring off such an uneasy marriage in O Brother Where Art Thou, but I felt Saxon expected a lot of me to suspend disbelief in the face of such uneven characterisation. There are moments of touching brilliance, such as when Eddie and his mother meet up. In the dark, she doesn't recognise him. She calls out her services of the night - before they come face to face in mutual pain and embarrassment. At other times we have to give it a big benefit of the doubt to avoid the feeling that we are watching acting-by-numbers.

What is so sad is that there are so many dazzling ideas here, so much talent that simply hasn't been polished into a sufficiently finished end-product. The film's website describes it as made with "hope, love, half a shoestring & private equity." Actors have received minimal fees and deferred payment.

Eddie is remarkably elevated to a protagonist of almost mythical qualities by the end of the film. Greg Loftin (who debuts as director, writer, executive producer, editor, and casting director) accomplishes a supreme feat of pulling his many larger-than-life characters together in a clever and strangely satisfying finale. His first feature is an undoubted accomplishment. People have worked very hard to get it to the point where it has been nominated for the Edinburgh International Film Festival Michael Powell Award. The best reason to see it might be to witness such raw talent rearing its head on a non-existent budget. But it might also leave audiences feeling they have paid to see a stupendous student-level film rather than a movie worthy of mainstream release.

As with any review, the opinion is only that of one reviewer. Saxon's quirkiness may hit you like a breath of fresh air, its originality enliven a jaded palate or two, or it might prove me wrong and win the Michael Powell. Or maybe I'm right and, in spite of the undeveloped qualities hiding beneath the surface, Saxon remains a missable low-brainer.

Saxon's press notes boast of its adherence to, and playfulness with, the rules and conventions of the great American westerns, but it is a very pleasant surprise to observe just how subtle and shrewd those genre nods are.

The plot is appropriately simple: Eddie (Sean Harris) returns home to the grim, ghostly Saxon housing estate after both a brief spell in prison, and a visit from a sadistic loan shark. With his one functioning eyeball on the line, Eddie tries to make a fast buck by interacting with a succession of the estate's most volatile misfits, in an attempt to track down a minor local celebrity who has inexplicably vanished.

It is an irrefutable oddity for sure, but the plot's fiendish momentum does exert a palpable grip, and for a film shot for almost nothing, it looks outstanding; composed entirely of wide- angled hand-held shots, it comes off (visually, at least) like a collaboration between Luc Besson and Andrew Bujalski. But the ominous, whacked-out aura is all its own.

This is simply perfect if you're in the mood for some impeccably crafted weird.

After the first few minutes I was very much looking forward to the rest of this film. Unfortunately it failed to deliver. A few bright moments in the script to begin with, but these gradually petered out.

A decent performance from Sarah Matravers, particularly in the early scenes, but she then became woefully under-utilised as the film plodded on.

I don't suppose it should be possible to meander at pace, but this film managed to do just that. We'll have to wait for the next offering to find out if this was due to the direction or the script - it wasn't the acting, which had some merit.

Hugely disappointed

You would be forgiven from reading other reviews of this movie for assuming it is a gritty gangster film set in a gritty London council estate. But if you make the effort to check it out you will be rewarded and surprised as it is really nothing of the sort; it is actually a mish-mash of reverential genre-hopping that adds up to a nice slice of entertainment.

Set almost entirely within the confines of the titular housing estate the plot concerns recent jailbird Fast Eddie (Sean Harris) returning to his familiar stomping ground trying to track down an old pal that has won a large sum on a TV quiz show. Eddie needs money desperately to settle a debt to some nasty characters who have already gouged out one of his eyes and intend to relieve him of the other if he doesn't stump up the moulah quick smart. Unfortunately his pal has disappeared so he enrols as Private Dick for the missing pals wife, offering to find out what has happened in return for a payment that gets him, literally, off the fish-hook.

Nicely paced, the film gives us the pleasure of a slow-reveal, as the various characters we meet, who seem random at first, eventually form part of a jigsaw that fills in all the gaps and lead us to a satisfying conclusion. Along this journey we are treated to all manner of movie conceit as a relatively simple idea plays out in a stylish manner that belies it's zero budget and manages to pay homage to the movies in a way that only a director who still feels the thrill of the big screen could manage to do.

We get more than our fair share of Kubrick, especially The Shining; a cute dose of Leone; a sprinkling of David Lynch and, very surprising in a small independent BritFlick, what seems like Wong Kar Wei. It is actually a film for those that like film and some viewers may find it a little pretentious at times but there is enough tension and black humour to sustain most and the cast manage to hold back on the histrionics despite the script giving them plenty of scope to go berserk. Harris is particularly good at this, hesitant and reserved in his delivery he just about gets our sympathy even though Eddie is as much a ne'er do well as most of the inhabitants of this very separate universe. Of course, the other star is the estate itself, more malevolent in the bright sunshine than it has a right to be; this is a directorial gamble that pays off very nicely. With the exception of a scene involving a lift you don't get a real feeling of palpable dread at any time, mainly because the characters are mostly bonkers - but you do really, really want to know what happens.

Saxon could possibly have been a little more compact and some scenes are merely there for fun, but it is a good idea, very nicely shot, well acted and when you think of the tripe that gets cash thrown at it, even in the independent world, you wish Loftin the best of luck to get more films made of this nature. Sassy, flawed but ultimately satisfying the best thing you can say is that it is fine entertainment and well worth the price of admission.