A contract killer John Thomas (Alex Hassell) is given a seemingly simple assignment - kill a young woman. However, John fails to murder the young woman and ends up being shot himself. Badly injured, he heads towards the flat of an old friend, but it turns out that his old friend has since moved out and he imposes himself on the reluctant new owner of the flat Sophie (Tori Butler Hart). Sophie unwittingly involves delivery boy Luke (Graham Butler) in her ordeal, but after some food and whiskey they listen to John's story and decide that they will help him out...
I'm British and I always try to give the benefit of the doubt to low-budget British films such as Two Down and whilst it certainly has its moments it isn't a brilliant film in its entirety...
For a start, the film is almost impossibly slow - I persevered because I'm used to dull slow starting films and it does take a lot for me to shut a film off halfway through, but Two Down came close.
So anyway it gets established (after a while) that John's failure is not to be tolerated and mob-boss Harry Montague (Game of Thrones Conleth Hill) doesn't take kindly to failure and tasks John's own brother to eliminate him (which of course Sam is reluctant to do as it is his own brother).
There is a slight story/character study here about a contract killer developing a conscience and starting to 'think for himself' but it is skimmed over in this film and this aspect of the story doesn't quite get the development that it deserves. Alex Hassell gives a good performance, but it was quite a distracting performance (he reminded me of a cross between Raul Julia and Johnny Depp in this film - this wasn't helped by the fact that I watched a moustachioed performance recently from Johnny Depp recently in Murder On The Orient Express).
To be fair though, the film does improve slightly in the second half - in the sense that it gains some momentum, but it's still rather predictable and did very little to get me on the edge of my seat.
In summary, the second half is OK but the rather boring and overly talkative first half of the film will likely prove too much for many people to endure - like I say the second half of the film is better than the first half, but overall I'm really not sure if this film is worth the effort.
I'm British and I always try to give the benefit of the doubt to low-budget British films such as Two Down and whilst it certainly has its moments it isn't a brilliant film in its entirety...
For a start, the film is almost impossibly slow - I persevered because I'm used to dull slow starting films and it does take a lot for me to shut a film off halfway through, but Two Down came close.
So anyway it gets established (after a while) that John's failure is not to be tolerated and mob-boss Harry Montague (Game of Thrones Conleth Hill) doesn't take kindly to failure and tasks John's own brother to eliminate him (which of course Sam is reluctant to do as it is his own brother).
There is a slight story/character study here about a contract killer developing a conscience and starting to 'think for himself' but it is skimmed over in this film and this aspect of the story doesn't quite get the development that it deserves. Alex Hassell gives a good performance, but it was quite a distracting performance (he reminded me of a cross between Raul Julia and Johnny Depp in this film - this wasn't helped by the fact that I watched a moustachioed performance recently from Johnny Depp recently in Murder On The Orient Express).
To be fair though, the film does improve slightly in the second half - in the sense that it gains some momentum, but it's still rather predictable and did very little to get me on the edge of my seat.
In summary, the second half is OK but the rather boring and overly talkative first half of the film will likely prove too much for many people to endure - like I say the second half of the film is better than the first half, but overall I'm really not sure if this film is worth the effort.