Rating: B
Dir: Jordan-Kane Lewis
Star: Aiden James, Katie Walker, Steven Wardle, Ian Hodson
“This guy I know, Andreas, used to work for these old criminal OGs. Basically, they’re retired now. But they still meet up at this pub at the edge of the Peak District: they still carry loads of cash and they’re still dealing. So the plan is, we’re going to go in, threaten them a little bit, take the cash, and leave.” Yeah. If ever something seemed like a really bad idea, that job offer would be it. Still, the combined power of pussy and desperation are hard to resist. Which is why vacationing uni student Alex (James), finds himself taking part in the above ill-conceived criminal enterprise, courtesy of girlfriend Lexy (Walker) and sketchy acquaintance Peach (Wardle).
Needless to say, this goes about as well as you would expect. However, along the way to an impressively bleak finish, there are diversions, so the outcome isn’t as simple as you’d expect. Initially, they look to have got away with their crimes, and the trio go on a holiday to Scotland. Which is where things start to go wrong, because Lexy might not be as committed to Alex, as he is to her. From there, it’s more or less downhill all the way, and after about half-way in, the sense of impending doom is quite palpable. Which is a shame, because the performance of James is easily enough to get your sympathy, despite being a layabout student. He’s still a nice guy, who simply wanted to help his aunt out of her money worries.
Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Alex’s naivety – in a number of areas – proves to be a fatal character flaw. There’s a general sense of cynicism here, in that the characters can be divided into two categories: sheep and wolves. Or maybe three: sheep, wolves and hungrier wolves. If you’re a sheep, you’ll either be taken advantage of, or find yourself caught up in the problems caused by other woolly jumpers. It might take a while. They’ll still eat you in the end. Given this, you might make a case the film could be even shorter, with an early party scene, and footage of the vacation in Scotland, arguably superfluous towards that end, at the length here
I was also expecting Alex’s film-making to be more significant than it ended up being. But there’s still plenty going on here, including some dangers I did not see coming. For it’s probably as effective a warning about the risks of thumbing a lift as The Hitcher – and that’s not the worst thing to befall Alex either. Given the likeable nature of the protagonist, I was pulling for him to find some way out of his increasingly perilous predicament. This consequently managed to keep my interest until the very end, which will drop like a ton of dirt on anyone who was pulling for a happy ending. Somewhat happy? Slightly happy? Don’t get your hopes up.