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Recent releases:
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- That They May Face the Rising Sun
- Jericho Ridge
- Civil War
- Mothers' Instinct
- Sweet East, The
- Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire
- Immaculate
- Roaring Twenties, The (reissue)
- Soul
- Dune: part two
- American Star
- Dune: Part 1 (reissue)
- Jerry & Marge Go Large
- Argylle
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- Mean Girls
Payback Season
Stars: Adam Deacon, Nichola Burley, David Ajala, Leo Gregory, Anna Popplewell, Bronson Webb, Billy Seymour, Arnold Oceng, Sir Geoff Hurst, Nicola Posener
Director: Danny Donnelly
Deacon won the Orange Wednesdays Rising Star Award at the recent BAFTA ego-feast. His film, however, is a lemon.
The press notes describe Payback Season as a gritty thriller. Theres plenty of grit in the sense of substances that hurt your eyes when the wind blows bits of grit into them, but the description thriller is a tad too fanciful for this low budget, lower aspiration saga that casts Deacon as a rising footballer who has escaped his beginnings on "the tough streets of London and beaten the odds to escape the council estate where he grew up.
So far, so routine.
Then everything Deacon has achieved, including an expensive Ferrari which makes the most memorable impression in the movie and an expensive riverside apartment, is threatened by old friend from the estate (Ajala) and his gang who give him and his younger brother a hard time with a nasty mixture of blackmail and intimidation
Romance between Deacon and television reporter Burley is injected into the clichéd violent brew without bringing it to the boil. Ive no real idea whether writers Donnelly and Jenny Fitzpatrick intended Deacons character to be realistic or likeable. In the final analysis, he is neither. Just like the movie
Alan Frank
UK 2012. UK Distributor: Revolver Entertainment. Colour.
91 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.
Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 2, Swearing 2.
Review date: 09 Mar 2012