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Surveillance

5/10

Stars: Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond, Ryan Simpkins, Pell James, French Stewart, Michael Ironside, Caroline Aaron, Kent Harper

Director: Jennifer Lynch

If you guess the twist early, as I did, in this bloodsoaked jigsaw-puzzle thriller, it hasn't much else to offer.

There are a couple of masked serial killers on the loose somewhere in the American midwest, but the psycho local police are more concerned with shooting motorists' tyres out, then tormenting them and robbing them of their money.

Two off-the-wall FBI agents (played by a newly-svelte Ormond and a distinctly middle-aged Pullman) turn up at the local cop shop and start interrogating the two survivors of the havoc, an eight-year-old girl (Simpkins) and the junkie girlfriend (James) of one of the deceased.

Nothing makes much sense until you see how the characters, victims all, interlock. Apart from Simpkins and Ormond, though, most of the characters have simply to appear objectionable. It's grim and doomy all right, but you keep wishing director Lynch (daughter of David), in her first feature film for 15 years, would actually get on with it - with not enough happening until near the end to make the web of mystery worth unravelling.

David Quinlan

Canada/USA 2007. UK Distributor: Odeon Sky Filmworks. Colour.
98 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.

Review date: 04 Mar 2009