Calibre (2018)

I'll tell you why so serious

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Starts off okay but gets farcical in the latter stages. Could have been so much better

Two hapless city boys play hunters in the Highlands and after one life-changing mishap.... One thing leads to another. They dig a hole for themselves; the hole gets deeper; etc etc. It's a tried and tested formula. Sometimes it doesn't work; sometimes it does; and on extremely rare occasions it is pulled off to perfection. You won't see another film that has you chewing your nails off quite as much as this. You'll cringe, you'll jump, you'll not wanna look at times, but you will watch it to the end and you'll tell your friends about it! Guaranteed!

The choices we make will ultimately define consequences we must face in the future. Or so, we've been told since a young age. Writer-director Matt Palmer gives that axiom a wicked spin in Calibre, a Netflix release not to be underestimated by its lean length and production budget. Before the film reaches its inevitable and horrifying conclusion, Calibre will have the audience questioning what is right and wrong. Viewers may even find themselves rooting for either the timid and polite Vaughn (Jack Lowden) or the confident and outgoing (Marcus Martin McCann), old friends off to the Sottish highlands for a bit of deer hunting. This would also be their last getaway as bachelors before Vaughn marries his newly pregnant fiancé. Upon arrival at the local tavern, the duo find the locals less than hospitable. At first it's not clear whether the locals don't take kindly to outsiders or they just don't like big city executives flirting with the local women. A night of pub-hopping later, the next morning starts with a hangover and ends with a nightmare that doesn't end.Thus begins Palmer's feature debut until it takes you to its mind-numbing and gripping final thirty minutes. If you survive this, the very last scene will leave you with an icy shiver. Very bad things happen in this film, some of which in quick succession and before we get a chance to digest the gravity of the horror unfolding on screen. While it's not about whether viewers can stomach some of the violence, the question that emerges is in identifying who the real villains are. Getting into more detail would be doing this shocking and edgy thriller a disservice but the two male leads are excellent, each in their own way. Lowden, fresh of the success of Christopher Nolan's war epic Dunkirk, and McCann building on his terrific performance in the 2016 post-apocalyptic thriller The Survivalist, are both exceptional in a simple story of a stag-weekend gone terribly wrong. Even so, they are both matched by strong talent from the likes of Tony Curran and Ian Pirie, playing village locals who are essentially law of the land. Calibre is evidently shot on a low budget but still manages to keep the viewer arrested with a sinking feeling that the worst is yet to come. While the premise of a stag night gone bad, or outsiders having to outsmart suspicious locals have been done many times before, Palmer's story is somehow counter-intuitive to what one would expect. In between balancing our sympathies for the two leads against a situation that gets gruesome by the minute, Palmer deserves the most praise for taking a familiar story and giving it a diabolical yet intentional twist. Neatly embedded in the story are also subtle questions about the disparity of power, wealth, and justice, while offering nothing but a bleak answer as to how and why bad things happen to good people. It isn't a joyous film to recommend and neither is there anything pleasant about the film but if so much can be delivered with so little, then Matt Palmer is the name to look for as the new and upcoming master of the macabre.

Having just watched CALIBRE on Netflix, I'm afraid that I'm not seeing what other reviewers on this site are seeing. For me, this is a typical independent-feeling thriller, lacking thrills, action, and originality, and instead content to go through the motions rather than innovating. The story is about a couple of friends who head into the Scottish wilderness for a spot of hunting but instead find only distrust and eventually open hatred. There's a shocking plot twist early on which plays out effectively, but otherwise this is mundane and overtly familiar, reminiscent of the likes of STRAW DOGS but nowhere near as good. Tony Curran and Ian Pirie are solid in support, but the young actors struggle with their unsympathetic characters and the whole thing is a real slog to watch.