| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/23/2012 : 10:15:58
Writer/director Stuart Urban's years working in British telly have given him a sure guiding hand to turn this indie conceit into something watchable. The technical elements all work and the acting - some from proven stalwarts in unexpected roles - adds great credibility to a film that almost works.
There's no getting away from it - we've got a very unlikely premise which plays out as a series of moments and encounters. Yes, most of it ties up at the end, but we get there in little bits. Sad to say, most of them don't really tempt us to the next and the next.
We can either guess what's coming, or the surprises feel really arbitrary. What I call a "wouldn't it be a good idea if..." structure.
Bottom line is a young cop who may or may not be psychotic, pledging to be a one-man vigilante to clean up the town - not to mention to wreck low-key, almost comic vengeance on people he hates.
I guess you might read this as a warning that Britain is being tempted into a rabid American mentality vis-a-vis community control - but it's a tricky tightrope to navigate. In the end this fails because it loses its balance, unsure whether to top over onto the side of irony or futurology.
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