Butterfly on a Wheel.

I do like a film with a twist - especially one you’re not expecting. Directed by British director Mike Barker, best known for his TV work on series like Outlander and the second series of Broadchurch, and shot mainly in Canada with Vancouver filling in nicely for Chicago, Butterfly on a Wheel (2007), or as it’s known in the USA Shattered, certainly has a grand twist.

 

Will the perfect couple complete their tasks on time to save their child?

We have what would appear to be the perfect American couple, man and wife Neil and Abbey Randall (Gerard Butler and Maria Bello) and their young daughter Sophie. They reside in a large comfortable modern house in Chicago and are obviously quite well off. Their American dream world is turned up side down when Sophie is suddenly kidnapped by Tom Ryan (Pierce Brosnan). Our middle class marrieds are then put through a series of twisted tasks by a cold and calculating sociopath to keep their child alive.

 

or will Tom Ryan excerpt his justice?

Certainly not an earth shattering movie, excuse the pun, but an entertaining 90 minute mystery thriller in which Brosnan pulls out all the stops as the ‘villain’ and one which will keep you guessing right up until the end. A film for a wet afternoon and if you don’t leave it to long can be seen on the BBC’s iPlayer. 

Survivor.

Some movies are destined for VOD or the DVD bargain shelf at your local supermarket and the British/American spy thriller Survivor (2015) directed by James McTeigue, best known for V for Vendetta his directorial debut in 2006, is one such movie. The film stars the ex Mrs Luc Besson, Milla Jovovich as Kate Abbott a Diplomatic Security Service Agent working at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square in London. Her job is to vet visa applications for entry into the USA to stop potential terrorist from entering the country. It turns out she is so good at her job that the worlds best freelance assassin known as The Watchmaker, a man who has had plastic surgery to make him look like Pierce Brosnan, is tasked with killing her at all costs which as you’ll see ends up wiping out nearly all her unsuspecting office colleagues in a bomb blast in a busy London restaurant.  Things get far more complicated in this far-fetched ‘thriller by numbers’ as time goes on. Full of plot holes this glossy drama is a Cert 12 that will give you some idea about the level of its content. Clumsily written by first time screenwriter Phillip Shelby it includes some patriotic nonsense inserted for its American market,  where as the blowing up of a large occupied council block of flats killing hundreds of people barely gets a mention!