The Killer Inside Me

This was very controversial when it came out owing to a scene where a woman is beaten to a pulp. It was a difficult scene for me to watch, and I winced as I watched the punches land right in her face one after another. I had thought that the opening scene with Lou's beating Joyce with a belt on the arse was the scene, but it turned out that worse was to come.

The start of the film is brilliant. You hear Lou's charming narrative about the importance of manners in Texas just before his actions in Joyce's house reveal that he is not a clean cop. The alternation between his quiet life as a copper in a town with no crime and a sadist who burns cigarettes onto beggers keeps you interested. The other police officers are not entirely honest either, but they don't kill anyone. You have to pay close attention to understand Lou's motives for killing Mike and trying to kill Joyce. This was originally a novel and a lot of information is squashed into the first half-hour. The pace slows right down after Lou kills Mike, and the rest of the film is dedicated to suspense as you wonder whether Lou will get caught or not. He is cold and calculating as he covers for himself. When he realises that the game is up, he makes sure that he takes everyone down with him. Lou is a scarey character: he shows little remorse for his killings and is able to stay one step ahead of the game. He may not win in the end, but he doesn't lose either.

The film is very uneven. As a Guardian journalist pointed out, it is odd how they show Joyce's beating in zoomed-in detail but then Johnnie Papas hangs himself off camera. I got bored in places and engrossed in others. It gets 6/10 from me. It lacks an emotional dimension to the main character. You see his strategy in protecting himself as if he's playing a game of chess, but he has none of the charisma that other great cinema villains have.

Cherry Tree Lane

The phrase "Home Invasion" has entered the British lexicon. By the time I'm old, we'll all be talking like George Bush. This film is a home-invasion flick for the British hoodie generation. It must've had one of the shortest cinema runs ever. I saw it listed at the cinemas in TimeOut London on 7th Sept (interview day), looked for it at the cinemas, didn't see it anywhere, then saw it on DVD in Blockbuster one day.

This film has good acting and a basic plot. The cast is largely unknown. Tom Kane, who plays a role akin to Krug in The Last House on the Left, is a convincing gang-leader-cum-psychopath. The other kids are less temperamental but look up to him. The opening scene shows a British middle-class couple cutting each other at dinner with snide comments. This is different from the usual strategy of making the victims as likeable as possible. You might even laugh a bit when this irritating couple get bound and gagged at first. However, any Schadenfreude should be gone by the time that the mother is raped (off-screen).

It's a short film and it could've been even shorter. The decision to introduce some younger kids was a poor one. They come in too late in the film and I find it hard to believe that kids that young would not be scared by this, even if we are in inner-city London. The very ending is the best part when the father gets his terrible revenge. We see his inner beast come out in much the same way that the nice doctor in The Last House on the Left becomes a murderer. There is a nice touch when he rings the police and gets an unhelpful response (a lot of people can relate).

I give this 5/10. It's not bad for a short film and gives you a kick of violence but it's nothing revolutionary. Ashley Chin may have a decent career ahead of him.

50 Dead Men Walking

I was one of the few who saw this at the cinema when it came out. I went alone to a cinema in Bradford to see it, and I noticed that the few other people in with me were all loners as well. It got decent reviews in the media, but most people in Britain are just not interested in Northern Ireland. It's funny how people are much more interested in learning about Afghanistan and the Taliban than they are about Northern Ireland and the IRA.

I don't think a film has ever been made showing the Troubles from a Unionist perspective. This film is not really Unionist but it is anti-IRA, and such a film had to be made. To be honest, my Northern Irish sympathies lie with the nationalist SDLP but, after The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Hunger, it was time for an anti-IRA film to balance things out a bit.

The start of the film is incredibly intense with a ambush on the McGartland at his car, years after he had left Ireland. This is returned to at the end of the film. It shows how powerful the IRA were that they could track him down thousands of miles away and years after he had stopped acting as a double-agent. I am surprised the film got a 15 and not an 18. It may not be violent all the way through, but there are torture scenes in it and I'd consider any torture to warrant an 18.

McGartland is not an angel but he's the sort of man who simply cannot bring himself to kill anyone, even if he might be willing to commit the odd petty crime. McGartland seems to have vague IRA sympathies at the start of the film, but he becomes more willing to report on their activities to the British secret services as he witnesses torture, bombing of pubs and lorries, and deals with shady Libyans. The ending states that McGartland saved 50 lives (as implied by the title) although he doesn't save anything like as many in the events we see in the film. I expect that the book (of the same name) gives details on this that the film omitted.

There is some very dark humour. The darkest is when a man in a balaclava says "Thank God for the IRA!" just before he knee-caps a petty thief.

There are attempts to show the crime of the British army as well. This is done well in the first half of the film in showing heavy-handed raids on homes and interrogation of people who are just walking around Belfast. It becomes a bit messy towards the end when MI5 get involved and want to sacrifice McGartland. Fergus, who recruited McGartland initially, seems to become a one-man-band at the time when McGartland is kidnapped, but Fergus must be still in his job later on when he arranges for McGartland to be re-located to Scotland. I've seen the film twice and I can't follow his thread properly. At the end of the film, the text box includes a note that the British government collaborated with Loyalist paramilitaries at times in the Troubles. This was obviously inserted just to avoid the perception of pro-British propaganda.

I'll give this 8/10. It was an entertaining story and a welcome addition to films about the Troubles. Can you believe that this film won awards yet lost a lot of money at the box office? It might've been more successful had it not been for the condemnation of the real Marty McGartland of the film and had it not been for Rose McGowan's stupid comments at the film's launch that she would've supported the IRA back then (thus alienating part of the film's audience), but Northern Ireland is never going to be cool.