Thriller

The Pact

An unoriginal, low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension

11 May 2012

The latest US horror/thriller to be granted a UK release has a slightly better pedigree than most: writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s film was developed from his own short, which was shown last year at Sundance, quickly developed into this feature…

Death Watch

Well-deserved re-issue of Bertrand Tavernier's prescient Glasgow-set sci-fi thriller

16 May 2012

Its plot is a credibility stretch even in these days of de rigueur media paranoia, and its relentlessly murky, moody tone might raise the odd giggle, but Tavernier’s long-neglected sci-fi curiosity is compelling nonetheless. Romy Schneider plays…

Profile - Riz Ahmed

16 Apr 2009

Born 1 December 1982 Background London Riz Ahmed graduated from Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics before training as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He came to prominence playing Shafiq Rasul, a member…

Lakeview Terrace

27 Nov 2008

THRILLER (15) 110min What could be safer than living next door to a cop? Well just about anything if that cop happens to be played by one of America’s leading black actors. Smug young marrieds Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington) move…

American Gangster

15 Nov 2007

Ridley Scott’s American Gangster opens with callous urban cruelty as a man is tied to a chair, doused with petrol and set on fire. But the reasons behind this violent act are less to do with anarchy than with good business, or at least that’s the lesson…

Anonymous

Surprisingly adept Shakespeare-themed historical romp from blockbuster director Roland Emmerich

12 Oct 2011

(12A) 129min Director Roland Emmerich is long established as the king of the apocalyptic blockbuster with a career defined by gung-ho event movies Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. It is quite a surprise to witness him diving…

Source Code

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan star in body-swapping thriller

18 Mar 2011

Duncan Jones’ dazzling debut Moon is, by any standard, a tough act to follow, but while sophomore effort Source Code can’t quite match up, it does ensure the director’s career remains on the right track. The film is an intriguing race-against-time…

Mesrine: Killer Instinct (l’Instinct de Mort)

30 Jul 2009

Tracing a line from Mesrine’s disillusioning military service during the Algerian war to the beginning of his notoriety in 1972 (when he graduated to murder), the first instalment of this epic crime tale is derivative, energetic and hugely…

Death Defying Acts

7 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/THRILLER (12A) 97min Freely mixing historical fact with fictionalised biography, this Brit-Aussie co-production turns on a fascinating premise: a battle of wits and wills between world-famous escapist and sceptic of all things supernatural…

Donkey Punch

17 Jul 2008

THRILLER (18) 99min The first fruit of the UK Film Council’s collaboration with Shane Meadows’ regular producers Warp X, Donkey Punch is a misguided attempt by Brits to muscle in on the already hackneyed torture-porn genre. Tammi (Nichola Burley…

Safe House

Brutally slick but flawed action thriller starring Denzel Washtington and Ryan Reynolds

8 Feb 2012

(15) 115mins Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds make a formidable partnership in Daniel Espinosa's Safe House, a brutally slick, if flawed, action thriller.

Straw Dogs

Risible remake of Peckinpah's 1970s revenge thriller

12 Oct 2011

(18) 109min An early star vehicle for Dustin Hoffman, Sam Peckinpah’s film of Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm was one of the high (or low) watermarks of early 1970s brutalism – a moody, nihilistic polemic that equated violence…

A Lonely Place To Die

Tense and riveting Brit-thriller set in Scottish Highlands

24 Aug 2011

How far would you go to save a stranger? Would you risk your life? And your friends’ lives? It’s a question Alison (Melissa George) and her fellow climbers must answer after they stumble across a young girl (Holly Boyd) buried in a wooden box while…

Point Blank (A Bout Portant)

Director Fred Cavayé's French thriller is engaging and well-paced

23 May 2011

(15) 84 min Fashion photographer turned filmmaker Fred Cavayé (Anything For Her) would have thrived in the old Hollywood studio system. His films operate with the speed and single-mindedness of a runaway locomotive. Give him a high concept premise…

Sin Nombre

10 Sep 2009

Last chance to see Cary Fukunga’s debut feature, an accomplished and powerful Mexican social thriller which centres on the themes of belonging and escape. When a city gangbanger tries to escape his murderous gang and a Honduran girl tries to sneak…

First Word: Jeffery Deaver

The American mystery and murder author waxes lyrical

21 Aug 2009

First record you ever bought The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Last time you were chatted up I had a marriage proposal from a woman I’d never met about two years ago at a bookstore in New York City. Does that count as chatting up? I declined.

Crying with Laughter

25 Jun 2009

The hot ticket among the Scottish films screening at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is Justin Molotnikov’s Crying with Laughter, a thriller starring Scotland’s Stephen McCole. Familiar from roles in Wes Anderson’s high school comedy…

Julia

8 Jan 2009

THRILLER/DRAMA What begins as a grim character study of a middle-aged alcoholic becomes a blackly funny crime caper/road movie. Tilda Swinton is in ferocious good form as the titular 40-year-old drunk, a woman whose natural good looks and flamboyant…

Rivals (Les Liens du Sang)

27 Nov 2008

THRILLER Based on the autobiographical book by Michel and Bruno Papet Deux Frères – Flic & Truand, Rivals is the story of two brothers in late 1970s Lyon, one a cop, the other a criminal. When the impressively moustachioed Gabriel (François Cluzet…

The Escapist - Brian Cox interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

As Brian Cox welcomes me into the interview room at London’s Gibson Guitar Studio, he points out a picture of Syd Barrett, ‘a son of Cambridge’, on the wall. It’s been just a few months since the Dundee-born actor was treading the boards on Broadway to…

No Country For Old Men

17 Jan 2008

THRILLER (15) 122min After the public ambivalence and critical lambasting of their last two films – Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers – the Coen Brothers return to form with this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, which features many…

Perth

1 Aug 2007

The title isn’t where this Singapore film is set; it’s simply the city in Australia that our central character dreams of moving to, a place without the corruption and poverty of his immediate surroundings.

The Monk

Vincent Cassel stars in Dominik Moll's visually impressive but otherwise inert thriller

17 Apr 2012

(15) 101min It’s been seven years since Dominik Moll’s last film, but the talented filmmaker who made the blackly comic thrillers Harry, He’s Here to Help and Lemming, is back with his most ambitious film yet. Sadly, Moll’s adaptation of Matthew…

A Dangerous Method

Cronenberg's cerebral study of psychoanalysis, starring Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender

27 Jan 2012

(15) 99min David Cronenberg’s new film is a change of pace for the seldom gore-shy director of The Fly and A History of Violence, being a talky period drama about the birth of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. But while the body-horror…

Man on a Ledge

Well paced, high concept thriller starring Sam Worthington, Jamie Bell and Elizabeth Banks

23 Jan 2012

(12A) 102mins Sam Worthington’s latest is an occasionally tense but mostly silly thriller that at least realises its own absurdities. The Hollywood debut of former documentary filmmaker Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cité Soleil), the film follows a…