ANGELA'S REVIEW!

 This is a very fine offering from first time director and screenwriter, Julian Simpson, who provides the audience with a very humorous, but dark thriller. It contains a mixture of sharp humour, excellent dialogue and all-round scripting, alongside this is a strong, technically accomplished combination of both visual and auditory editing. This allows for smaller details to be amplified and drawn attention to, and also time-scales to be shifted via rapid-cutting and other editing devices.

Steve Macintosh's character, Jasper, is a musician who, after a chance meeting with Sarah (Natasha Little), finds himself being framed as chief murder suspect in a murder, as a small pawn in a more sinister plot.

Mr Peter Hume (Eddie Izzard) enters the narrative as a sarcastic, chief forensic scientist with RAF pilot moustache and ultra white overalls. A slightly tweedy character, but very quick-witted in the sarcasm department. Hume, is from what I can see, similar to Eddie in terms of the speed of wit, pace of speech and descriptive manner, so the part may have been tailor-made for him, I'm not sure. The character is quite casual, but intelligent with cunning, and cool with it, very likable in fact.

Following the initial murder, Jasper, is promptly interviewed by Chief Detective Walker (Bernard Hill) and his female colleague, Detective White (Holly Aird). Jasper is stuck amid a drastic plot and possible frame-up. As he starts to be made more aware of this problem, paranoia begins to set in and panic ensues.

Sarcasm ago go. Many of the lead characters and even some of the secondary ones, just seem to be aflood with sarcasm, which in many ways provides an extra edge to the character make-up. This means that there are no truly "soft", defenseless types except for Jasper, but he's more vulnerable through ignorance, rather than "soft".

The film also contains a lot of weird analogies especially from Eddie's character, Hume, plus some very bad disguises from the C.I.D detectives, but that seems to be on purpose as an additional comedic device. This is not your conventional murder plot and it displays originality in its writing. It also appears to contain some "in" jokes, now, whether they were added post-casting is something that I am again unsure of, but they are greeted by an acknowledged awareness from the audience, which is I feel a sign of good scripting and also possibly comic timing.

There is a high expletive count present throughout the film, so do be warned if you're either very young or easily offended.

This is great film that Eddie has chosen to be involved in. It is expertly shot, and incorporates every aspect of a good film, creative use of lighting and sound, editing and overall dynamics. I hope that is a marker for the work that Eddie is able to accomplish in future acting roles. I'm sure it will be. Julian has been able to use an excellent cast for this film and I feel that shows through in the final cut. I look forward to seeing Julian Simpson's next film project.

As far as I am currently aware, the film has not yet found a distributor but I would imagine due to the packed cinema that it played to during the London Film Festival, it won't be too long before it does. However, the 43rd Film Festival is touring the U.K, so you may get the opportunity to see it before it gets its all important distribution deal. I hope it does as I would love see to this film again.