This film tries to create an aura of mystery and fails. It ends up being predictable and ultimately disappointing. It builds itself up for a major payoff that ends up not being anywhere near as shocking as you are lead to anticipate. Clyde turns out to be yet another typical Glaswegian anti-hero who committed a crime he didn't mean to and Jackie is just another person who hasn't gotten over the pain of loss and goes out of her way to manipulate her position, both at work and in her 'entrapment' of Clyde. The film captures the 'dreach' or bleakness of Glasgow well and it definitely captures the nature of technology and the certain voyeurism that results from it more often than not. But ultimately, it is a very goody-two-shoes ending. The best parts of the film are the acting, cinematography which has a Dogma 95 quality and the editing but again, the script is a let down. It could be a story that happens ANYWHERE and it fails to explain why necessarily Glasgow. All together, I found this film to be too hyped up to bother.
Red Road
2006
Action / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Red Road
2006
Action / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Plot summary
Jackie is a CCTV operator. Each day, she watches over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze. One day, a man shows his face on her monitor, a man she thought she would never see again, a man she hoped never to see again. Now she has no choice and is compelled to confront him.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
August 23, 2016 at 05:58 AM
Director
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
Tries too hard
believable realism, complex and interesting characters
This movie is a slow but engaging film about loss, guilt, and urban life in Scotland. I found it intriguing to watch the lives of lower class people in Scotland and its unglamorised portrayal of daily existence in high rise apartment blocks. Messy flats, shitty greasy spoon diners, laundromats, housing blocks with no frills, no trees, just like the real thing.
The surveillance camera cop was interesting in itself, but the story was almost a bit part player in this film. yes it was interesting and the way it was unveiled without giving away any details before you absolutely had to know them was well paced.
But the characters were the most interesting thing, This is bleak, modern, urban life, real and uncompromising. Not overly ugly, just raw and real, and interesting.
good pacing but ultimately unconvincing
All of us, at sometime or another, have had to cope with grief. Most people do not 'get over' the death of a loved one, they learn to accommodate it, while knowing that on the inside they are changed forever.
Some of us, unfortunately, also have to cope with causing hurt and destruction in the lives of others as a result of our own self-inflicted substance abuse. The subsequent guilt and self-loathing is never punishment enough.
What Red Road asks of the audience, is to believe that two people whose lives become intertwined as a result of such actions would resolve their relationship in the fashion this story relates.
Red Road is well-directed in terms of framing and drip-feeding the backstory to the audience, superbly acted, has admirable cinematography and creditable art direction. However, I did not believe this story. The script just did not have the power to achieve such towering heights of catharsis. Witness Clyde's final attempt at explanation for his horrible act: "This kind of thing happens every day. Sh#t happens." This is a line that conjures up no emotion at all, a cliché, from a character who did not deserve clichéd treatment. There are more glaring gaps in credibility - would the police not recognise the past connection between these two characters when she makes the rape charge? How can the CCTV footage of her escaping Red Road still be in the cupboard when it is evidence in an ongoing rape investigation? Can you really drop rape charges with just one phone call? And in a tale so grounded in realism, isn't it a heck of a coincidence that Clyde's daughter shows up when she does?
This is a promising but not wholly convincing debut from Arnold. I would not call her a wise filmmaker, but she is certainly brave. Arnold is not Scottish, but by setting a film like this in Glasgow she invites comparisons with Lynne Ramsay - not because they are two of that rarest of creatures, the female director, but because stylistically and thematically they are so close. Let Ramsay do her thing (which she does very well), and hope that Arnold finds her own voice and style. I will certainly look out for her next film.