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Handsome and genteel one minute, haunted and gloomy the next, Edinburgh is an ideal filming location, as much a movie set as a city. But writer/director Richard Jobson’s latest hometown love letter has no time for casual tourism.
This breathless indie hits the streets of Auld Reekie running and never lets up. In a plot familiar from 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game, skid-row scamp James Anthony Pearson agrees to be hunted by businessman Dougray Scott – for money – although the stakes are soon raised when Scott starts spitting out vicious class rants and stomping heads.
Scott’s methods don’t bear much scrutiny, but then they don’t get much – the film’s forever snapping at Pearson’s heels as he legs it for his life.
Racing from lawless tenement to loveless townhouse, it’s grittier and gutsier than the cut-price Running Man clone it threatens to become, a spiky little speedball of caustic social commentary and guerrilla thrills.
Matt Glasby is a freelance film and TV journalist. You can find his work on Total Film - in print and online - as well as at publications like the Radio Times, Channel 4, DVD REview, Flicks, GQ, Hotdog, Little White Lies, and SFX, among others. He is also the author of several novels, including The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film and Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting To This Is England.