Rating: B-
Dir: Max Keough
Star: David Lenik, Rory Wilton, Ricardo Freitas, Rosie Edwards
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from watching movies, it’s that stumbling across a fortuitous stash of money is never a good thing. Run away. Immediately. Otherwise, you will end up with one of the following. A) Christopher Eccleston in your attic (Shallow Grave). B) Billy Bob Thornton wielding a tyre iron (A Simple Plan). C) And probably worst, Javier Bardem flipping a coin at you (No Country for Old Men). Death inevitably will follow – it might well be yours. And yet, people naively continue to think they can get away with it. The latest sucker is Calvin Trask (Lenik, also the film’s writer), inhabitant of a small Norwegian town, up by the Arctic Circle.
He follows his new neighbour, Lucas Wade (Wilton), and watches him digging up a bag of cash. Shortly after, Lucas is attacked by two men; Calvin helps patch him up, and also dispose of the bodies in the snowy wilderness. Turns out Lucas used to work for a cartel, and skimmed off two million dollars, which his collaborator stashed away in the nearby woods. However, the cartel boss, the brutal Gabriel Ortega (Freitas), has discovered the embezzlement, and is none too happy about it. There is some other stuff round the edges, such as Calvin’s terminally-ill mother, and the woman (Edwards) who cared for her. However, none of it is particularly important: this is a mostly straightforward tale, kept simple and told in a similar manner.
I must admit, I was a little confused initially, by the fact that everyone involved here has an English accent, despite the Scandinavian location. I’d just about got over that, when the cartel boss shows up, and… Yes, he also sounds as if he had finished a shift as a BBC continuity announcer. It’s all a bit weird. Yet, that aside, I found a good deal to enjoy here. Everyone here is holding secrets of varying shapes, sizes, and relevance to proceedings as they unfold. Consequently, there are some very effective “Holy shit” moments sprinkled through proceedings. Wilton probably delivers the most effective performance, though the script likely gives him more with which to work, such as a desire to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
After Ortega gets fed up of sending minions who fail to carry out their assignments, he shows up with an unexpected friend, and it’s at this point the film truly gets going. I don’t think it counts as a spoiler to say, there will be Mexican standoffs, betrayal, and more than one corpse. It is quite restrained in its ambitions, and there isn’t much here you won’t have seen before. Yet it kept me interested in both the outcome, and the way things developed towards it, from the first scene to the last. That’s an outcome some far larger-budgeted movies could only hope to achieve.
[The film is out now on Tubi, or to rent on Amazon Prime and other streaming services]