New Town Killers

2008 "A game. A hunt. A kill."
New Town Killers
5.6| 1h37m| en| More Info
Released: 28 October 2008 Released
Producted By: Scottish Screen
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.independentfilmcompany.com/screeners/new_town_killers.html#
Synopsis

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 parentless 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.

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Reviews

magnuslhad 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.
Daniel Miller (millerlfc) 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.
Claudio Carvalho 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")
SueBridehead 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.