Watching realtors at work and play is surprisingly pretty interesting and laying them alongside this rough crime element allows the film to instantly plough fruitful juxtaposition without lifting a finger. It’s a shrewd, simple setup, effectively the same story as Alan Clarke’s BBC classic movie, The Firm, which featured a young Gary Oldman as a successful estate agent and football hooligan in Thatcher’s Britain.
It is superbly shot by Korsshan Schlauer and the editing by Ian Davies is blisteringly good. It’s just well manned by all involved, and the cherry on top is a fresh soundtrack by The The, which helps to really drive home the hunger and sterility Flynn passes through, even if the production does sensational guerilla work counter balancing that by ducking in and out of some of Camden’s most celebrated pubs on screen.
It feels let down then when it come to rigour with action. That opening at the dentists features a contactless payment of $950. Yes, it may aid the film’s gunslinger’s stance to not concern itself with buttoned down facets of reality like a $100 maximum payment, and I would be the last person to insist I’d be gripped necessarily by someone entering their pin, but surely little impossible things have no useful place in any story, except as a convenience to the makers?
“Watching realtors work and play is surprisingly pretty interesting…”
In a similar vein, a plot strand about Flynn’s web app for a “global letting agency” doesn’t make any sense either technically or commercially, feeling like an unconvincing dead end long before it forgets to become one. However it does provide an opportunity for Charley Palmer Rothwell to give a nice turn as a shrill and annoying app developer, so who’s counting the logical consistencies at the end of the day? Maybe it’s worth cutting the odd corner here and there to get a mad psychodrama of a film, replete with psychedelia, up and at ’em on the world’s streaming platforms? It’s a nice change from all that bullshit with frowny coppers.
Finally, viewers in the UK will delight in the appearance of Mikael Persbrandt, here playing The Viking, a mysterious hit man. Persbrandt is currently on British TV screens as Gold Arthur, whose commercials on daytime telly offer cash for our unwanted gold. So seeing him here as a hitman is a bit like watching Barry Scott armed to the teeth. Thrilling, then.
"…a mad psychodrama"
