New Town Killers (2008) User Reviews

Interesting but not brilliant

[SueBridehead · 7/10 · 15 June 2009]

This film has definitely made it its aim to philosophise about the value of life and money in our modern society while showing as many chasing scenes as possible.

I saw it 2 days ago and I'm still not sure whether it succeeded in either. Reflecting on it I realised that it actually developed the main question of what people will do for money in almost all the main characters but without any real revelations or novel answers.

References to Crime and Punishment seem to be a bit too much of a claim to real depth.

Overall I'd say, go and see it if you like Edinburgh or if you want to kill some time. As long as you don't expect a masterpiece you might enjoy it.

The Game (with Michael Douglas) was far better

[lucygoodyear · 7/10 · 20 November 2009]

Having grown up in Edinburgh I expected to enjoy this film based on the comments of other reviewers. I also chose it for Dougray Scott who plays a mean if somewhat two dimensional villain in other films with entertaining results. I felt that the story was weak and rather predictable. However, that did not detract from the performance of the young male lead who I thought was excellent and utterly convincing as was his friend. Liz White continued to grow in my estimation with this performance having already seen her in "Life On Mars" and "A Short Stay in Switzerland". These actors far exceeded the capabilities of the script and the storyline and I will continue to watch for them in future releases. To be honest, their performances and the clever use of art and location in the film are the only reasons I have for giving this film a 7. If the score was for storyline alone, it would have garnered a 3.

Like a Scottish 'Hard Target' or maybe it's 'Surviving the McGame'.

[specialbobby · 6/10 · 19 October 2009]

But with out a Jean Claude Van Damme or an Ice T it has a wee Scots lad in stead as the hard up hero getting mixed up with rich guys on a human hunting trip.

It starts with a title sequence thats Lucky Number McSlevin, red and black animated rooftops and soon as we realise the hard up Edinburgh kid is in a bit of a cash crisis and life's crap Dougray Scott turns up all Lance Henriksen like with a little offer of cash for a challenge.

The game begins, we get a lad running through the dark dark streets of Edinburgh that the festival brochure won't show, while Scott and his lesser sidekick give chase, playing coppers and starting on chavs (a lighter moment for those of us who dislike aggressive teenage gangs).

Reasons, motivations, peoples, none can be trusted during a long night where bars, clubs, gig venues are all packed out yet no one walks the streets and having been to Edinburgh this is a little silly.

Scott plays the hard Bastard a lot better here than in other films like MI:2 and Hit-man but there's no real connection to any characters part in the story so you feel more a witness to a dour hunting party rather than being involved in the chase.

After a while the film takes a change of pace and the outcome becomes less obvious but makes the lad being chased far to intelligent and clever to be where he is in life at the start. But it does have a nice conclusion.

This movies a bit boring in places and not as thrilling as i'd hoped but it's nice to have a British thriller without Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan or a London setting which gives it a leg up on a few of it's peers. Worth watching even if it's just to support small independent British film.

One question though, if a buildings locked and you have to break a window to get in how come that's not an option when you need to get out?

Promising Beginning, Silly and Flawed Conclusion

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 25 September 2010]

In Edinburgh, the teenager Sean Macdonald (James Anthony Pearson) lives a life without perspective with his sister Alice Kelly (Liz White). Out of the blue, Sean discovers that Alice owes twelve thousand pounds to dangerous people that are forcing her to travel to Amsterdam to traffic drugs. However, he is contacted by two men, Alistair Raskolnikov (Dougray Scott) and Jamie Stewart (Alastair Mackenzie) that offer twelve thousand pounds to him to play hide and seek for twelve hours with them. If their hunting fails, Sean would earn the amount on the next morning. Sean accepts but sooner he finds that Alistair is a sadistic paranoid killer and he needs to escape not only for the money, but to survive.

"New Town Killers" has a promising and engaging beginning, but unfortunately has also a silly and flawed conclusion. The plot has many flaws, and Sean would be in trouble in the end, driving a car with a dead body in the trunk and leaving his fingerprints everywhere. There is a shallow clichés explanation of the reasons for the insane behavior of Alistair and is impressive how a janitor is able to access the computer protected by a password the way Sean does. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Pelo Prazer de Matar" ("For the Pleasure of Killing")

A promising first half let down by an average second...

[ajs-10 · 5/10 · 28 August 2010]

I hadn't heard anything about this British Independent film before I saw it come up on TV last week. There are some very good Indie films out there and on the face of it this one looked pretty good, but more of that later. The setting is the urban environment of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.

A young man, Sean Macdonald, is down on his luck. He has lived in a flat (or apartment if you prefer) with his sister Alice since their mother passed away. Sean finds it hard to hold down a job and Alice has managed to get herself into a large amount of debt. Even Sean's best friend, Sam, cannot help him out. So when two men, Alistair Raskolnikov and Jamie Stewart offer him the chance to win enough money to pay off all of Alice's debts he finds himself with no option but to take them up on the offer. All he has to do is hide from the two of them from 9PM until 9AM the following morning. What follows is a dangerous game of cat and mouse in the back-streets of Edinburgh. I will not tell you who wins, but there are many twists and turns along the way.

What we end up with is a gritty and at times violent chase thriller with plenty of excitement and some interesting twists and turns. That's the first half of the movie. Unfortunately the second half does not live up to the promise of the first. There are decent performances from all of the leading cast, so honourable mentions go to Dougray Scott as Alistair Raskolnikov, Alastair Mackenzie as Jamie Stewart, James Anthony Pearson as Sean Macdonald, Liz White as Alice Kelley and Charles Mnene as Sam. Oh and there's also a brief scene with Karen Gillan, now starring along side Matt Smith on TV in Dr Who.

As I said the second half of the film is a bit of a let-down. A lot of the energy and tension built up in the first half is lost and I felt the film just petered out rather than building up to a big finish. So, in the end it was a bit disappointing although Dougray Scott is very menacing as the bad guy. I certainly wouldn't want to come across him on a dark night! Over all, a good first half let down buy a very average second… Not recommended.

My score: 5.3/10

Hide and seek.....

[FlashCallahan · 3/10 · 20 February 2010]

Two private bankers, Alistair and Jamie, who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a 12 hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society.

Their next target is Sean Macdonald a parent-less teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast.

Sean agrees to play for cash. He soon realises he's walked into twelve hours of hell where survival is the name of the game....

basically the British version of Hard Target, and to be honest, not very good. It sounded like a clever film, but really, if someone offered you this task, you would just bunk up in a hotel for the night and sleep out the twelve hours??

The poor kid who gets offered the game isn't the brightest spark, he's carrying all this money around with him, doesn't get a taxi or anything, and just runs around the (very)empty streets.

I know it sounds like i'm taking the fun out of the film, but the makers have done that themselves by making it not very realistic, and using the two villains, as nothing more the eighties reject yuppies who have nothing better to do.

Scott is the only good thing in this, and he's really scraping the barrel now, considering ten years ago he was in summer blockbusters.

It's too mundane, not very exciting, and very predictable.

Boring, amatuerly made, awful script - Dougray Scott is the only plus point

[millerlfc · 3/10 · 7 September 2011]

This is genuinely one of the worst films I've had to sit through (I've rated over 1,800 films so far and not many have got this low a score). Despite being quite a short film it dragged on for what felt like hours - quite what Dougray Scott was doing in this I'll never know (charity? slumming it?). He does what he can with a poor script, snarling away and making the rest of the cast look poor, but ultimately you don't care about his character or any of the others.

I can appreciate it was made on a budget, but it seems to have also been made with no professional supervision. Every scene was amateur, no sense of timing (I can quite comfortably state this is the worst 'chase' movie I've ever seen) and there isn't enough of a plot to keep anyone interested.

British Noir is Not an Oxymoron

[basilisksamuk · 9/10 · 21 August 2010]

The Encyclopaedia of Film Noir reckons that films have to be American to qualify as film noir. As a generalisation I can accept this but nor as a universal truth. New Town Kill is British (Scottish if you like) and it is clearly a film noir or, at least, a neo-noir.

I'm honestly deeply impressed with this British film, a phrase you will seldom hear me utter. Most Brit films are an embarrassment to me, being usually limp, unfunny and completely lacking in cool, style or engaging story. I'm glad to see the back of the Film Council and all the overpaid "executives" who dole out what remains of their money, after their fat salaries have been accounted for, for another flaccid waste of time.

This film, on the other hand, IS cool, engaging and genuinely exciting in a way that movies should be. The budget is clearly small but the acting talent on display is massive. The direction and writing by Richard Jobson are excellent and I just love the sheer nihilism of the plot and the fact that everything does not need to be justified or explained. The "villain" is completely amoral and the "hero", apart from family allegiances, is ultimately not much different.

A British film can be film noir and New Town killers is the proof.

PS If IMDb is for genuine film lovers then why do glossy American blockbusters get hundreds of reviews whilst really interesting independent films or foreign language films (i.e. non-American films) end up with a handful of reviews like this one?

'Trainspotting'?, without the drugs

[tim-764-291856 · 5/10 · 1 September 2011]

This film's Edinburgh set crime thriller, which dips into murky chase torture at times has a sense that 'Lola' (the modern-ish German classic) is going to be parodied.

Obviously pitched at being outside of actual reality, where wealthy landlords, pimps or drug dealers (known in the film as 'private bankers') not only extort their penniless customers but also bait and taunt them, as in some cruel, sadistic game.

Unfortunately, this is no The Third Man (shadowy sinister characters lurking on dark corners), Lola (the 'chase' seems to be mainly driving about in a Jaguar saloon) whilst The Trainspotting vibes resonate most. Except, there simply aren't the oddly likable, charismatic characters in that, for a start. There's quite a few Hitchcockian twists with a silent, weaving camera teasing us, though.

It seems that the whole thing passed me by without making much of an impression. Not sure exactly where it fell down, maybe a bit in each. I daresay I'll have forgotten it by tomorrow. There have been US equivalents that have worked better, maybe for being more villainous, or better written, or better everything. It's not a bad effort, though and worth watching if it's free and not much else is on. Equally, it won't sink the indie Brit film scene but very definitely, unlike Trainspotting, won't set it alight either.

Low budget thriller tries too hard and fails

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 29 November 2014]

NEW TOWN KILLERS is a low budget Scottish riff on the Van Damme film HARD TARGET and many other movies, such as THE GAME and the 'hunting human' classic that spawned them all, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. This one sees a hard-up teenager lured into playing a deadly game by a bored investment banker (!) with murder in mind.

The problem with the film is the lack of talent on the part of the filmmakers. They try hard, sure, but the issue is with the direction: the attempt to make this flashy and appealing to young people just makes it feel dated and I honestly thought it was shot in the 1990s. Then there are the animated titles, promising a decent free-running movie; unfortunately the opening sequence is unconnected to the rest of the movie and the only example of Parkour in the whole thing.

Instead we get low budget emoting throughout and some dodgy writing which gradually sacrifices plot and character in favour of some predictable 'twists' and endless, only mildly exciting chase sequences. The main character really suffers from one-dimensional characterisation; despite the best efforts of star James Anthony Pearson, he's never likable for a second and comes across as a below-average-intelligence thug.

What a relief, then, to have Dougray Scott on board as the film's villain. Scott is a delight here, a joy as he reveals in his own sheer evilness. He brings verve and vigour to his role and at times seems to be the only professional actor on board. Certainly he's the best thing about the movie and as NEW TOWN KILLERS reached its second half he was the only reason I kept watching.

witless

[magnuslhad · 2/10 · 23 August 2015]

A script this poor should never have been made. There is an attempt at social commentary, monied classes playing psychopathic games with the underclass simply because they can. There is an attempt to tick the thriller genre boxes, but all terribly clichéd - a jump across rooftops, flashing red tracker lights, a stalk through a nightclub (and switched identities that resolve this), hiding in the stalls in a toilet... There is not one original thought or scene in this whole film. The dialogue is full of clichés - "I am your friend" - and often lacks plausibility. For example, the protagonist is enraged when he discovers his sister has run up a debt of 12,000 pounds. The hunters offer him exactly 12,000 pounds to be hunted. When he calls to accept, he asks: "How much are you offering again?" The theme seems to take issue with the corrupting influence of money but has a flippant attitude towards male prostitution. This kind of puerile writing makes it impossible to talk about the performances, the actors simply have nothing to work with. This is a po-faced, poorly executed film, the main achievement being to confirm that whatever talents Jobson has, screen writing is not one of them. Two stars for some nice photography of one of my favourite cities.

Seen same in other films.

[linziaj · 3/10 · 21 July 2022]

All I can say is the main character is THE worst person to ever play hide amd seek. First off, dump your clothes in case they have you tracked and your phone. Hide in sewer or a car or anything but run around the streets in full view. Great actors in a poor movie. Seen similar plot with most dangerous game, the hunt etc.

Edgy, thrilling and very very good!

[fluffyrona · 9/10 · 10 January 2009]

One of the most creepy, scaring and ultimately thrilling films I've seen for a long time, New Town Killers benefits from some amazing performances, not least by Dougray Scott, who was never this menacing in Desperate Housewives (;-) LOL).

His presence on screen is brooding and claustrophobic, a real tour de force as a troubled soul with some very strange habits and preferences - and the rest of the cast more than stands up to be counted alongside him.

Jobson's edgy, jumpy camera style simply adds to the tension, and by the end of the film, if you don't have clammy hands and find yourself short of breath as a result of feeling you are IN the movie, then I challenge you to check for a pulse. Really really good.

The Absolute Game

[bushtony · 8/10 · 12 March 2010]

Richard Jobson - one-time front man with seminal Scottish punk band Skids, musician, songwriter, poet, vocalist, chat show interviewer, film critic - has latterly turned screenwriter and director.

As a long-term fan, I feel have to be honest enough to admit that I didn't really engage with his debut feature, "16 Years of Alcohol." Not my thing, despite respecting the work. However, this gritty, dynamic take on "Hounds of Zaroff/The Most Dangerous Game/Hard Target" territory is a bit of a stunner.

Clearly shot on a shoestring budget, Jobson offsets the financial limitations with some stylishly nervy camera-work and a cracking script that piles on the tension throughout. Even when location shooting some of the more deprived and desolate areas of Edinburgh, he succeeds in doing so with a sensitive and almost loving rendering. It's the mark of a craftsman.

The performances are top notch, shot through with combinations of varying intensities of evil (Scott and Stewart) and pathos (Pearson and White). Everything rings true - apart, perhaps, for Scott on occasion, who has moments where his psychopathic villain comes very close to lurching into an almost grand guignol pantomime performance. Notably, the cliché he offers to explain why he does what he does ("Because I can") is a little familiar from overuse in any number of generic psycho-thrillers from the past. It was hackneyed, the script didn't need it.

However, it's a cool and well-paced chase flick with enough shocks, twists and turns to grip the attention. In the last fifteen minutes or so momentum does seem to stutter a bit, but it's a small point.

Someone somewhere should invest Jobson with a budget and some resources. He's a rare and diverse talent and the sort of person creative mainstream cinema can never have too many of. Who needs Avatar when you can have this? Or more to the point, who needs Avatar?