Rating: C+
Dir: Jordan-Kane Lewis
Star: Paul Jonah, Leona Clarke, Martin Nadin, James Morton
When I hear the word “non-linear”, I reach for my gun. I’ve been burned by too many shitty Pulp Fiction wannabes, attempting to imitate a film which, frankly, is overrated to start with. Too often, jumbling a time-line is an effort to hide the flaws of a pedestrian plot from the audience. So reading the synopsis here – “An easy job takes a turn for the worse, making a hitman’s life more complicated in this nonlinear micro-budget film” – had me flicking the safety off. To my pleasant surprise, that aspect isn’t a problem. Yes, it’s not told in chronological order. However, it’s not hard to tell where it’s going, and to assemble the pieces appropriately.
When you do that, you’ll basically get a Northern England version of Léon: The Professional. You have hitman Lucas (Jonah), who doesn’t have much of a life outside his work. One day, he’s sent to clean up a double murder scene, perpetrated by Marcus (Nadin), the psychopathic son of his boss. Except, one of the victims, Maria (Clarke) isn’t dead, which poses Lucas with a bit of a problem. He ends up stashing her away in his apartment, while he tries to figure out what to do. But the longer he stays with her, the more his relationship with Matilda sorry, Maria gives him a reason to live. For obvious reasons, Marcus is of the opposite opinion, Maria representing a potentially dangerous loose end, in need of tidying up.
The parallels are apparent, from an opening scene where Lucas puts the fear of God into his target, before putting him on the phone with Lucas’s boss, then vanishing into the shadows. There’s even a scene where Lucas and Maria tend to his pot-plant. Clearly, it’s not going to hold a candle to Besson’s masterpiece, especially on the action front, where that micro-budget is most apparent. But I’m never going to hate a love-letter to a movie I also love. It’s not a slavish copy, and I liked some of the additions, such as Lucas’s visit to a body-disposal facility, run by a surprisingly chipper dude. The Derbyshire setting isn’t one we see often, and there’s some bone-dry humour coming out of the local characters.
It’s shot in black-and-white, though I’m not sure about the purpose of that choice. There’s also occasional use of a strobing effect, which seems to have strayed in from a nineties music video, and should have been sent back there. At a brisk hour, there’s not a lot of fat on its bones, and consequently feels an appetizer rather than a main course. Certain elements do have scope for further development, most obviously the relationship between Lucas and Maria, which is more functional than particularly affecting. On the other hand, the non-linear structure is nowhere as chaotic as the poster suggests, and does provide a satisfying “ah-hah!” moment, when you realize both where this is going, and where it has gone.