New Town Killers (2008)

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

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

Richard Jobson - one-time front man with seminal Scottish punk band Skids, musician, songwriter, poet, vocalist, chat show interviewer, film critic - has latterly turned screenwriter and director.As a long-term fan, I feel have to be honest enough to admit that I didn't really engage with his debut feature, "16 Years of Alcohol." Not my thing, despite respecting the work. However, this gritty, dynamic take on "Hounds of Zaroff/The Most Dangerous Game/Hard Target" territory is a bit of a stunner.Clearly shot on a shoestring budget, Jobson offsets the financial limitations with some stylishly nervy camera-work and a cracking script that piles on the tension throughout. Even when location shooting some of the more deprived and desolate areas of Edinburgh, he succeeds in doing so with a sensitive and almost loving rendering. It's the mark of a craftsman.The performances are top notch, shot through with combinations of varying intensities of evil (Scott and Stewart) and pathos (Pearson and White). Everything rings true - apart, perhaps, for Scott on occasion, who has moments where his psychopathic villain comes very close to lurching into an almost grand guignol pantomime performance. Notably, the cliché he offers to explain why he does what he does ("Because I can") is a little familiar from overuse in any number of generic psycho-thrillers from the past. It was hackneyed, the script didn't need it.However, it's a cool and well-paced chase flick with enough shocks, twists and turns to grip the attention. In the last fifteen minutes or so momentum does seem to stutter a bit, but it's a small point.Someone somewhere should invest Jobson with a budget and some resources. He's a rare and diverse talent and the sort of person creative mainstream cinema can never have too many of. Who needs Avatar when you can have this? Or more to the point, who needs Avatar?

Two private bankers, Alistair and Jamie, who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a 12 hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society.Their next target is Sean Macdonald a parent-less teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh.She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast.Sean agrees to play for cash. He soon realises he's walked into twelve hours of hell where survival is the name of the game....basically the British version of Hard Target, and to be honest, not very good. It sounded like a clever film, but really, if someone offered you this task, you would just bunk up in a hotel for the night and sleep out the twelve hours?? The poor kid who gets offered the game isn't the brightest spark, he's carrying all this money around with him, doesn't get a taxi or anything, and just runs around the (very)empty streets. I know it sounds like i'm taking the fun out of the film, but the makers have done that themselves by making it not very realistic, and using the two villains, as nothing more the eighties reject yuppies who have nothing better to do.Scott is the only good thing in this, and he's really scraping the barrel now, considering ten years ago he was in summer blockbusters.It's too mundane, not very exciting, and very predictable.

But with out a Jean Claude Van Damme or an Ice T it has a wee Scots lad in stead as the hard up hero getting mixed up with rich guys on a human hunting trip.It starts with a title sequence thats Lucky Number McSlevin, red and black animated rooftops and soon as we realise the hard up Edinburgh kid is in a bit of a cash crisis and life's crap Dougray Scott turns up all Lance Henriksen like with a little offer of cash for a challenge.The game begins, we get a lad running through the dark dark streets of Edinburgh that the festival brochure won't show, while Scott and his lesser sidekick give chase, playing coppers and starting on chavs (a lighter moment for those of us who dislike aggressive teenage gangs).Reasons, motivations, peoples, none can be trusted during a long night where bars, clubs, gig venues are all packed out yet no one walks the streets and having been to Edinburgh this is a little silly.Scott plays the hard Bastard a lot better here than in other films like MI:2 and Hit-man but there's no real connection to any characters part in the story so you feel more a witness to a dour hunting party rather than being involved in the chase.After a while the film takes a change of pace and the outcome becomes less obvious but makes the lad being chased far to intelligent and clever to be where he is in life at the start. But it does have a nice conclusion.This movies a bit boring in places and not as thrilling as i'd hoped but it's nice to have a British thriller without Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan or a London setting which gives it a leg up on a few of it's peers. Worth watching even if it's just to support small independent British film.One question though, if a buildings locked and you have to break a window to get in how come that's not an option when you need to get out?