New Town Killers

At the Q&A session which followed New Town Killers recent premier at the London Film Festival one member of the audience accused director Richard Jobson of making government propaganda and being involved in a romantic tryst with Gordon Brown. Which might sound like the insane ramblings of David Cameron's mum but, having watched the film, it does have some validity. But only because it's a film where the bad guys are hedge fund managers. (Really, if it got more topical you'd have to question whether Jobson was in possession of a time machine. In fact, I get the sneaking suspicion that a news program discussing the current economic crisis, which plays in background during a number of scenes, might have been added after the fact.) Though how a film as pessimistic about society as this could be considered propaganda for a government thats been in power for over a decade I'm not sure.

Structurally New Town Killers is your basic chase movie but with a social conscience, half Eli Roth, half Ken Loach. The action working class oik Sean (James Anthony Pearson) as he is hunted through the streets of Edinburgh by 'ethical finance' employees Alistair (Dougray Scott) and Jamie (Alistair Mackenzie). Sean has been drawn into this deadly cat and mouse game in an attempt to pay off his pregnant sisters debts. It's a film which points a finger at the nihilistic black heart of British society and the contempt which the rich, and many of the not so rich, have for the poor and disenfranchised. At one point our banking villains run through a list of things they hate, including social workers and asylum seekers, which could easily be a list of tabloid headlines.

Working with a small budget it's admirable that Jobson has managed to make a film about social issues in an entertaining manner, a method which is sure to make this film appealing to a much wider audience. He also draws an outstanding performance from Dougray Scott; as usual the best lines go to the devil. However the film feels a little clumsy both in its presentation and its politics. Whilst Jobson condemns upper class contempt for the poor, he does little to dispel it. Sean and his sister are both rather one dimensional characters and their tower block flat is lit in a particularly dingy fashion. Perhaps fittingly, having watched New Town Killers, I went to a talk by Tom Hunter. His photography is a reminder that beauty and social critique need not be antagonistic. He gives his subjects real life, character and nobility. Something that New Town Killers fails to do.





Women Reading Possession Order - Tom Hunter


Jake Garriock

The Good, The Bad and The Weird

Korean cinema is, in my opinion, the template which every other country outside of America should be following. Thats South Korea of course, propaganda films are normally boring crap about how much bread everyone has. In Korea they have a quota system which means that cinemas have to show a certain number of domestic films. It used to be that they had to show domestic films for 146 days of the year but thats now been reduced to 73 days. Still it's better than nothing. Of course some free trade blowhards will say that this protectionism diminishes quality. Thats horseshit for two very good reasons. Firstly, 99 % of the time it's not the best films, however subjective that may be, that do well, but the most expensive. This is mainly because the films with money behind them can afford to spend millions on advertising. The resulting wankfest of newspaper articles, and MTV 'making of...' shows, changes the humble film into an event. Once a film is an 'event' it doesn't matter how abismal the reviews are, your kinda forced to watch it, just to confirm that it's rubbish. Second, films aren't, or shouldn't be, merely products, but cultural artifacts. It's important, I think, that a country has a strong national cinema as a platform for discussing national issues, whatever they may be. If cinemas are flooded with American films, of variable quality, then a national cinema cannot flourish and will struggle to find investment. Having said all this, the film which preciptitated this rant, The Good, The Bad and the Weird, is perhaps not the greatest example of what Korean sytem can produce. As the name suggests it's a parody of the spagetti westerns of Sergi Leone. It's a film which is essentially about nothing. Not about nothing in the 'modern culture is meaningless' way but about nothing in an insane, crazed fantasy world way. The plot revolves around a treasure map which various sharpshooters and nutbags want to get their hands on. Gunfights follow gunfights, which are then followed by long horse/car chases across the dessert with then further gunfights. It's all done in a very stylish, humourous way and the clothes are great. It's like a really amazing fireworks display, but with more guns. It doesn't tell you much about Korea, but it does go to show if you have a thriving film culture you can afford to spend a truckload of money on madcap films like this.

Jake Garriock