This stormingly confident debut from director Jamie Childs, until now best known for prestige TV work like The Sandman and His Dark Materials, is oozing with style, energy and visual panache. It’s a propulsive thriller that belies its low-budget means and makes the very most of its north-east England setting. Recognising the visual potential of Hartlepool’s industrial landscapes and eerie oil refineries, there’s an almost sci-fi quality to the film’s riveting opening act, which sees an enigmatic man (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, finally earning leading-man status) embarking on some sort of nefarious drug deal. The opening half-hour is the film’s strongest, light on dialogue and high on genre thrills. A thumping techno soundtrack from Deadly Avenger and Si Begg doesn’t hurt.
Jamie Childs gives some of his imagery a strange, fantastical quality
There’s real spark here, and Childs gives some of his imagery a strange, fantastical quality: a gun-toting horse-rider seems to have come almost from another plane of existence. You almost wish the film stayed in this more liminal register. When things get more plotty, it starts to lose the thread somewhat; the pace of the first hour isn’t sustained, and some of the dialogue lands a little flatly. While Jackson-Cohen maintains a steely stoicism, the supporting characters prove a mixed bag: Jenna Coleman plays against type as a Cheryl Cole-alike gangland matriarch; Thomas Turgoose brings a chaotic kind of energy; the villain of the piece is simply silly and over-the-top.
By the end, it falls rather victim to formula and standard genre pitfalls. But it’s hugely refreshing to see bold genre filmmaking set in an area of England so often disregarded by filmmakers, or only considered for social-realist misery-fests: a rare film populated with Geordie accents that isn’t about mine closures or wannabe ballet dancers. It’s rare, too, to find action films with dialogue like, “Haway, ya wankers!”