Humbersi
The first must-see film of the year.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Fatma Suarez
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Claudio Carvalho
In Edinburgh, the teenager Sean Macdonald (James Anthony Pearson) lives a life without perspective with his sister Alice Kelly (Liz White). Out of the blue, Sean discovers that Alice owes twelve thousand pounds to dangerous people that are forcing her to travel to Amsterdam to traffic drugs. However, he is contacted by two men, Alistair Raskolnikov (Dougray Scott) and Jamie Stewart (Alastair Mackenzie) that offer twelve thousand pounds to him to play hide and seek for twelve hours with them. If their hunting fails, Sean would earn the amount on the next morning. Sean accepts but sooner he finds that Alistair is a sadistic paranoid killer and he needs to escape not only for the money, but to survive."New Town Killers" has a promising and engaging beginning, but unfortunately has also a silly and flawed conclusion. The plot has many flaws, and Sean would be in trouble in the end, driving a car with a dead body in the trunk and leaving his fingerprints everywhere. There is a shallow clichés explanation of the reasons for the insane behavior of Alistair and is impressive how a janitor is able to access the computer protected by a password the way Sean does. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Pelo Prazer de Matar" ("For the Pleasure of Killing")
basilisksamuk
The Encyclopaedia of Film Noir reckons that films have to be American to qualify as film noir. As a generalisation I can accept this but nor as a universal truth. New Town Kill is British (Scottish if you like) and it is clearly a film noir or, at least, a neo-noir.I'm honestly deeply impressed with this British film, a phrase you will seldom hear me utter. Most Brit films are an embarrassment to me, being usually limp, unfunny and completely lacking in cool, style or engaging story. I'm glad to see the back of the Film Council and all the overpaid "executives" who dole out what remains of their money, after their fat salaries have been accounted for, for another flaccid waste of time.This film, on the other hand, IS cool, engaging and genuinely exciting in a way that movies should be. The budget is clearly small but the acting talent on display is massive. The direction and writing by Richard Jobson are excellent and I just love the sheer nihilism of the plot and the fact that everything does not need to be justified or explained. The "villain" is completely amoral and the "hero", apart from family allegiances, is ultimately not much different.A British film can be film noir and New Town killers is the proof.PS If IMDb is for genuine film lovers then why do glossy American blockbusters get hundreds of reviews whilst really interesting independent films or foreign language films (i.e. non-American films) end up with a handful of reviews like this one?
FlashCallahan
Two private bankers, Alistair and Jamie, who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a 12 hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society.Their next target is Sean Macdonald a parent-less teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh.She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast.Sean agrees to play for cash. He soon realises he's walked into twelve hours of hell where survival is the name of the game....basically the British version of Hard Target, and to be honest, not very good. It sounded like a clever film, but really, if someone offered you this task, you would just bunk up in a hotel for the night and sleep out the twelve hours?? The poor kid who gets offered the game isn't the brightest spark, he's carrying all this money around with him, doesn't get a taxi or anything, and just runs around the (very)empty streets. I know it sounds like i'm taking the fun out of the film, but the makers have done that themselves by making it not very realistic, and using the two villains, as nothing more the eighties reject yuppies who have nothing better to do.Scott is the only good thing in this, and he's really scraping the barrel now, considering ten years ago he was in summer blockbusters.It's too mundane, not very exciting, and very predictable.
specialbobby
But with out a Jean Claude Van Damme or an Ice T it has a wee Scots lad in stead as the hard up hero getting mixed up with rich guys on a human hunting trip.It starts with a title sequence thats Lucky Number McSlevin, red and black animated rooftops and soon as we realise the hard up Edinburgh kid is in a bit of a cash crisis and life's crap Dougray Scott turns up all Lance Henriksen like with a little offer of cash for a challenge.The game begins, we get a lad running through the dark dark streets of Edinburgh that the festival brochure won't show, while Scott and his lesser sidekick give chase, playing coppers and starting on chavs (a lighter moment for those of us who dislike aggressive teenage gangs).Reasons, motivations, peoples, none can be trusted during a long night where bars, clubs, gig venues are all packed out yet no one walks the streets and having been to Edinburgh this is a little silly.Scott plays the hard Bastard a lot better here than in other films like MI:2 and Hit-man but there's no real connection to any characters part in the story so you feel more a witness to a dour hunting party rather than being involved in the chase.After a while the film takes a change of pace and the outcome becomes less obvious but makes the lad being chased far to intelligent and clever to be where he is in life at the start. But it does have a nice conclusion.This movies a bit boring in places and not as thrilling as i'd hoped but it's nice to have a British thriller without Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan or a London setting which gives it a leg up on a few of it's peers. Worth watching even if it's just to support small independent British film.One question though, if a buildings locked and you have to break a window to get in how come that's not an option when you need to get out?
