New Town Killers (2008)

Best movie of this year hands down!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is genuinely one of the worst films I've had to sit through (I've rated over 1,800 films so far and not many have got this low a score). Despite being quite a short film it dragged on for what felt like hours - quite what Dougray Scott was doing in this I'll never know (charity? slumming it?). He does what he can with a poor script, snarling away and making the rest of the cast look poor, but ultimately you don't care about his character or any of the others.I can appreciate it was made on a budget, but it seems to have also been made with no professional supervision. Every scene was amateur, no sense of timing (I can quite comfortably state this is the worst 'chase' movie I've ever seen) and there isn't enough of a plot to keep anyone interested.

Richard Jobson - one-time front man with seminal Scottish punk band Skids, musician, songwriter, poet, vocalist, chat show interviewer, film critic - has latterly turned screenwriter and director.As a long-term fan, I feel have to be honest enough to admit that I didn't really engage with his debut feature, "16 Years of Alcohol." Not my thing, despite respecting the work. However, this gritty, dynamic take on "Hounds of Zaroff/The Most Dangerous Game/Hard Target" territory is a bit of a stunner.Clearly shot on a shoestring budget, Jobson offsets the financial limitations with some stylishly nervy camera-work and a cracking script that piles on the tension throughout. Even when location shooting some of the more deprived and desolate areas of Edinburgh, he succeeds in doing so with a sensitive and almost loving rendering. It's the mark of a craftsman.The performances are top notch, shot through with combinations of varying intensities of evil (Scott and Stewart) and pathos (Pearson and White). Everything rings true - apart, perhaps, for Scott on occasion, who has moments where his psychopathic villain comes very close to lurching into an almost grand guignol pantomime performance. Notably, the cliché he offers to explain why he does what he does ("Because I can") is a little familiar from overuse in any number of generic psycho-thrillers from the past. It was hackneyed, the script didn't need it.However, it's a cool and well-paced chase flick with enough shocks, twists and turns to grip the attention. In the last fifteen minutes or so momentum does seem to stutter a bit, but it's a small point.Someone somewhere should invest Jobson with a budget and some resources. He's a rare and diverse talent and the sort of person creative mainstream cinema can never have too many of. Who needs Avatar when you can have this? Or more to the point, who needs Avatar?

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?

This film has definitely made it its aim to philosophise about the value of life and money in our modern society while showing as many chasing scenes as possible.I saw it 2 days ago and I'm still not sure whether it succeeded in either. Reflecting on it I realised that it actually developed the main question of what people will do for money in almost all the main characters but without any real revelations or novel answers.References to Crime and Punishment seem to be a bit too much of a claim to real depth.Overall I'd say, go and see it if you like Edinburgh or if you want to kill some time. As long as you don't expect a masterpiece you might enjoy it.