some may find the denouement a tad sentimental, but it is a long, dark and twisted journey that takes us there, scrutinising the shadier contours of human loss and guilt like a grainy face on a screen.
Red Road (2007)
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
In the squalor of urban Glasgow, Jackie (Katie Dickie) works at a video-surveillance firm that is in charge of protecting people who live on a single block of Red Road. One day a man appears on her monitor, a man she thought she would never see again. That man is an ex-con named Clyde (Tony Curran). Clearly shocked to see him free from prison, Jackie begins stalking Clyde, compelled to confront him for his crimes. What mysterious history do they share, and why is Jackie so determined to punish this man? Filmmaker Andrea Arnold keeps the audience guessing and the tension building as Red Road crescendos to an explosive finale.
After three acclaimed shorts, including Wasp, which won the Sundance Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking and the Academy Award, Red Road marks Arnold's highly anticipated feature debut. It was constructed within the framework of Lars von Trier's experimental Advance Party project, the first of three films set in Scotland, by three different directors, using the same nine characters. Masterfully crafted, Red Road gets the project off to a stirring start.
--© Sundance Film Festival [Less]
Genre: Thriller, Vengeance, Love
Starring: Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston, Natalie Press, Paul Higgins
DVD Info
Release:
Apr 8, 2009
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- NTSC
- Keep Case
- Anamorphic Widescreen
- Single Side - Dual Layer
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Reviews
A slow-burning but enticing thriller, it captures its working class Glaswegian setting in absorbing detail.
Where it excels is in capturing the dead end hopelessness of Glasgow's boozers and tower blocks.
What we have here is one of those very long, very slow dramas that might just have worked if the inevitable twist ending had been worth sticking around for. But it isn’t.
Katie Dickie gives an astonishing performance as Jackie, displaying a cold, brittle exterior that occasionally cracks to reveal both pain and passion in equal measure.
A strong story--involving and moving and probably a little too long.
Sets a chilling downer mood that gets under your skin like few films ever do.
Ancorado pelas performances complexas de Dickie e Curran, o filme traz a diretora estreante Andrea Arnold como uma revelação a ser observada com atenção nos próximos anos.
Unfortunately, its superb performances and assured camerawork are overwhelmed by dubious psychology and a clichéd climax.
A brilliantly conceived thriller that keeps us guessing right up to the very end, Red Road intrigues but frustrates by its slow development and often incomprehensible Scottish dialogue
A strange sort of map of the city [is] spread across these fragmented cubes of visual information. And there's also the metaphorical map of the characters' lives, where they're coming from and where they're going.
I like that you're never sure where this road is going to lead.
Like the Peeping Tom-paranoia of similar recent films Disturbia and Civic Duty, this finely crafted debut feature by Scottish writer/director Andrea Arnold packs a wallop.
Red Road is an atmospheric little thriller made up of equal parts paranoia, loneliness and anxiety.
The glacially paced film is tersely episodic, and scenes are thrown onto the screen like jagged bits of raw meat that have been torn from a bone.
It’s a jarring sensation, for a thriller not to be about the chase, or the mysterious force of evil lurking in the shadows, but about an intangible gulf dividing two people occupying the same room.
Though it's paced as a thriller, the film ultimately emerges as a haunting exploration of how grief can weigh on us, and the depths to which it can drive us.
An impressive debut that is orchestrated with a deep, underlying tension that never lets us guess what will come.
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