Rating: B
Dir: Andy Crane, Nathan Shepka
Star: Nathan Shepka, Grace Cordell, Manjot Sumal, Sylvester McCoy
Shepka’s most recent work, such as Lock & Load, has tended to be breezy action flicks, light in tone. This is definitely not. It’s closer to a Glaswegian riff on Taxi Driver, with its troubled protagonist navigating his way through the seediest of city underbellies, in order to rescue a young girl from sex traffickers. Alex (Shepka) is considerably more of a conventional hero than Travis Bickle – we first meet him rescuing a woman from getting raped in a back alley. But he’s very much a lone wolf, living by himself in a caravan, when not working as a bouncer. Outside of visits to his father’s care home, the only human contact is occasional visits by part-time hooker, Gemma (Cordell).
His relatively quiet life is upturned when he’s visit by retired lawyer Evan (McCoy), who offers Alex twenty thousand pounds to track down a missing girl, for reasons which… are a little shady. Alex is convinced to accept, and finds himself encountering some of the worst humanity has to offer, as he seeks to crack the ring run by Amar (Sumal). His ability to break heads certainly comes in handy there. However, Amar and his thugs are willing to hit back, operating under the control of the mysterious Mr. Holden (Patrick Bergin in an undeniably creepy supporting role). But there might be no enemy more dangerous than a man who has nobody to care about.
The scenario feels somewhat inspired by the hellish Rotherham scandal, though obviously heavily fictionalized and re-located to Glasgow. Still, it’s likely a story no big studio would ever consider, being just too problematic. The city often feels like a malevolent presence here, its darkness pulling the unwary in. Its a sensation which seems to ramp up the further in we go, with light and hope becoming hard to find, and death increasingly appearing to be the only way out. Yet it’s surprisingly nuanced at points, the script generally avoiding easy stereotypes. The paedophile Alex quizzes in Barlinnie Prison is almost sympathetic, and even Amar is weirdly protective of his own daughter, which backfires after one of her friends becomes a target for the ring.
Not everything works: Gemma’s day-job as a teacher feels an unnecessary wrinkle, which adds little. Fortunately, more succeeds that fails, such as Alex’s dad being deaf, so they communicate in sign language. [Which comes in handy, since the girl he’s looking for, unexpectedly turns out to be deaf too] These scenes unfold in silence, Joe Renzetti’s score wisely knowing when to stay quiet. Shepka seems deliberately to be underplaying as Alex, and that’s likely a good thing. The other performances are a little less consistent, though I didn’t feel they hurt things too badly. There’s a point with about twenty minutes to go where I suddenly realized this was unlikely to end well. It’s all downhill from there for almost everyone, and the way this finishes is impressively grim. I’d just not expect an endorsement from the Glasgow Tourist Board.
The film is available in the US on January 7th, with the UK release on February 17th.