SPOILERS
I know I shouldn't be too hard on this film - the music was almost as good as Mike Figgis's in COLD CREEK MANOR and the plot implausibilities requiring substantial suspension of disbelief no more so than in THE BONE COLLECTOR - both of which spent quite a bit more funds than this endeavor.
And I'm sure Mr. Simpson had a good time playing with all the digital video goodies available - but I had a hard time connecting with/ caring about the people in the village.
I didn't particularly find the time limitation all that compelling (perhaps I was just slow on the uptake there) and while I can believe a police dispatcher might continue reading a romance novel to the end of a paragraph or so before answering the phone, I would find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be caller identification equipment of some kind, even in a remote Scottish village - or wherever the nearest police station would be (I probably should've checked the last time I was in Thurso, Mey, and John O'Groats, but I didn't; I may be talking out of turn).
I did find some humor that may (or may not) have been inadvertent - the best was when the Hitman is trying to pick off the two boys and has succeeded in putting a crossbow arrow through the thigh of one of them. The other boy with the gun (who has suddenly figured out how to fire it - with a rather large number of shots - after an extended sequence in which he couldn't get any shots off at all) runs over to him and says "Don't go anywhere!"
OK.
Maybe I had my expectations too high. Maybe I relied too much on an IMDb rating generated by 7 people, 5 of whom also wrote comments for this film and no other ones. Maybe I was just having a bad day.
But I saw a film from Thailand which was 121 minutes long right before this film - and there seemed to be a lot less ticks in that one than the 85 minutes in this one.
But as the Ed Wood character (played by Johnny Depp) says, after being told that a film of his is the worst some person has ever seen: "Well, my next one is going to be better!"
I know I shouldn't be too hard on this film - the music was almost as good as Mike Figgis's in COLD CREEK MANOR and the plot implausibilities requiring substantial suspension of disbelief no more so than in THE BONE COLLECTOR - both of which spent quite a bit more funds than this endeavor.
And I'm sure Mr. Simpson had a good time playing with all the digital video goodies available - but I had a hard time connecting with/ caring about the people in the village.
I didn't particularly find the time limitation all that compelling (perhaps I was just slow on the uptake there) and while I can believe a police dispatcher might continue reading a romance novel to the end of a paragraph or so before answering the phone, I would find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be caller identification equipment of some kind, even in a remote Scottish village - or wherever the nearest police station would be (I probably should've checked the last time I was in Thurso, Mey, and John O'Groats, but I didn't; I may be talking out of turn).
I did find some humor that may (or may not) have been inadvertent - the best was when the Hitman is trying to pick off the two boys and has succeeded in putting a crossbow arrow through the thigh of one of them. The other boy with the gun (who has suddenly figured out how to fire it - with a rather large number of shots - after an extended sequence in which he couldn't get any shots off at all) runs over to him and says "Don't go anywhere!"
OK.
Maybe I had my expectations too high. Maybe I relied too much on an IMDb rating generated by 7 people, 5 of whom also wrote comments for this film and no other ones. Maybe I was just having a bad day.
But I saw a film from Thailand which was 121 minutes long right before this film - and there seemed to be a lot less ticks in that one than the 85 minutes in this one.
But as the Ed Wood character (played by Johnny Depp) says, after being told that a film of his is the worst some person has ever seen: "Well, my next one is going to be better!"