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. 

Fifty Dead Men Walking.

Without having read Stakeknife – Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland written by Greg Harkin and Martin Ingram it would have proved more difficult to understand Kari Skogland’s thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking (2008) about Ireland between 1988 and 1991 in a period of Irish history known universally as The Troubles. Stakeknife is an expose of how British Military Intelligence recruited undercover informants via the British Force Research Unit to work for both the IRA and the Unionist organisations. Most notoriously for the ‘Nutting Squad’, which was the IRA’s internal security force that allegedly tortured and killed around 40 suspected informers. Therefore these people were murdered under the direct influence of the British Government!

 

British agent Fergus....

The movie tends to cover much the same ground as the Harkin/Ingram book, but is based on a loose adaptation of Martin McGartland’s 1997 autobiography. McGarland was a petty crook recruited by a British agent known as Fergus who becomes his handler (a not particularly convincing Ben Kingsley) to infiltrate the Republican Army. At first McGarland does not take his new role seriously but the deeper he gets involved the more it affects his own life and the lives of the people around him including his girlfriend Lara (Natalie Press) and their baby.

 

....recruits more agents!

The film takes its name from McGartland's claim, within his book, to have saved the lives of fifty people including police officers, soldiers, and prison guards during his time as an British informant. Thirty six year old British actor and singer Jim Sturgess, who has regularly appeared on TV and in feature films since 1994, gives a credible performance as the double agent. The biggest problem with this film, along side its rather complicated proceeding’s, is the sound, which makes it very difficult at times to understand what is being said, and the old faithful undertitles were not available on the copy I watched!

Coriolanus

We are in a modern day city called Rome, the people are on the streets demonstrating because of lack of grain and food shortages, there are military threats to the counties borders and the government is ineffectual. General Caius Martius crushes the food riots by inflicting severe force on the populace. He’s then forced to lead a campaign against the Volsians whose leader Tullus Aufidius threatens the very fabric of Rome, hand to hand fighting ensues. For his part in winning this bloody battle Martius receives the honorary title of Coriolanus and a nomination for the consulship, much to the joy of his mother Volumnia………..

A career defining performance from Fiennes.

Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus (2011) has never been adapted for the cinema, until now. Ralph Fiennes has played the part of Coriolanus in a stage play before, but this cinematic version is not only his directorial debut but he also takes the main lead and has a hand in the production. The film is shot in Belgrade and magnificently photographed giving a convincing and bloody feel to the war torn zones by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd who has a long pedigree including ten Ken Loach movies and two recent conflict films 2009’s award winning The Hurt Locker and the Green Zone (2010). As well as a career defining performance from Fiennes the support is superb with Gerard Butler playing the vicious warlord Tullus Aufidius, Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus proud and defiant mother, Jessica Chastain, who I last saw in the magnificent The Tree of Life (2011) as his subservient wife with Brian Cox as the senator Menenius.

The film is about modern day warfare, the type of which you see on the BBC News channel every night, and the pitiful world that we all now inhabit. It fact newsreader Jon Snow is actually seen on Rome’s news channel, Fidelis! Fiennes and his scriptwriter have turned the Bards play into an engaging political drama, admittedly devoid of humour but one that reverberates into your subconscious.  

We told you to turn off the mobile phone!!!!!!!

Sex Traffic.

The Purple Teardrop Campaign.

Dumfries and Galloway Domestic Abuse and Violence Against Women Partnership (DAVAWP) organised a free screening at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre as part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence campaign. The evening was arranged to highlight human trafficking, 80% of which involves women and young girls. Victims, usually from poorer countries are enticed to richer one’s, with promises of a good job and somewhere decent to live. Women and girls in particular are targeted by traffickers, offered jobs in hotels or restaurants, but in reality, they are intended for work in the sex industry. When they arrive in this country their passports are taken away, they are raped, often beaten and imprisoned in brothels or massage parlours and forced to have sex with multiple clients every day. The majority of victim’s trafficked into the sex industry are from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. For more information on sex trafficking and ideas on how to stamp it out see The Purple Teardrop Campaign

The Film.

Following a short introduction the mainly female audience watched Sex Traffic a powerful drama originally shown in two-part’s on British television in 2004. It was shot in Eastern Europe, Canada and London and involves the sex trade where young women are transported to various cities and forced into prostitution. The main thrust of the story involves two sisters from Moldova who are tricked into thinking that a better life awaits them in London where they have been promised legitimate work. Instead they are sold into sexual slavery and trafficked through Romania, Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia, Italy and eventually to the sexual under bellow of London. The brutal life of the girls is juxtaposed with corporate business in America involving corruption amongst international peacekeepers and demonstrates how sex is seen as just another lucrative business venture without any feeling for the human misery that it evokes, and as the film so adequately reveals its “just a matter of supply and demand”

Harry Potter filmmaker David Yates pulls no punches in this BAFTA award winning Channel 4 production; John Simm plays the researcher and charity investigator Daniel Appleton and Anamaria Marinca makes her debut as one of the two sisters, Elena Visinesou, a role she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress and went on to make the award winning Romanian feature film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). Tonight’s screening was a great way to exemplify the harrowing nature of the sex trade it exposes and the greed of the so called legitimate businesses involved that are no better than pimps and criminal’s.