Most of the violence occurs off-camera with Chris Wyatt’s clever editing skills conveying an unbearable tension that gnaws away as the vehement locals prepare to take matters into their own hands. There’s a Straw Dogs feel to the way the film plays out, and it’s brutal and not for wimps. One mistake leads to another as soon all hell breaks loose with the locals who are not able to forgive or forget. A gross error of judgement leaves Vaughn and Marcus toughing it out at the lodge, rather than reporting events to the local police, or even heading home – there’s also a suggestion that some kind of business deal is attached to the trip to explain their staying, but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise gripping little thriller.
What happens next is pivotal to the remaining hour or so of the film where the two wish they had spent the weekend quietly at home in Edinburgh rather than drenched in dread and despair up north. Dawn sees them venturing into bristling gorse-lands nursing hangovers that clearly skew their shooting skills. Palmer and his Hungarian DoP Mark Gyori establish the dour milieu of the tartan-shrewn hunting lodge where the two settle down to a night of heavy drinking, you can almost hear the bagpipes grinding ominously in the gloaming. The only downside is the lack of a spunky female character to counterbalance the fearsome red-bloodied males in a cast led by Jack Lowden ( Dunkirk/Small Axe).Īfter a romantic opening scene the engines start firing when suburban, soon to be father Vaughn (Lowden) bids farewell to his fiancé Anna (Morgan) and heads off with close friend Marcus (McCann) into the wild and rather hostile territory of West Lothian for a spot of deer shooting. The last shot of a character’s stunned, ravaged expression – an emptied out look of despair – is truly chilling in a way that no hand suddenly shooting up from the ground or it-was-all-a-bad-dream reveal could be.Dir/Wri: Matt Palmer | Cast: Jack Lowden, Martin McCann, Tony Curran, Ian Pirie, Cal MacAninch | UK Thriller 101′Ī wee weekend in the Scotlish highlands has no happy outcome for anyone concerned in this gritty thriller that sees the usual low budget British gangland flick evocatively transposed to north of the border.Ĭalibre is the feature debut of seasoned shorts director Matt Palmer whose canny script certainly makes for gripping if uncomfortable viewing.
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Another welcome departure from expected form is to have the way the film emphasises the cultural, intra-national divide between urban and rural Scots – a duller, less imaginative movie might have made the unfortunate but self-centred visitors Englishman or blokes from abroad.Įlsewhere, Palmer and co flirt with the conventions of horror movies, although ultimately the horror is purely psychological, not supernatural in origin. The constant invitations to stay for the bonfire and ceilidh will evoke anticipation in some that this might go the way of The Wicker Man. And so they lavish the young visitors from down south with hospitality they can’t refuse, no matter how eager they are to get the hell out of Dodge. The locals, led by hale fellow Logan (the redoubtable character actor Tony Curran), are troubled by the community’s economic misfortunes and keen to draw Marcus and his imagined oodles of capital into shoring up the area financially. Photograph: Anne Binckebanck / NetflixĪmongthe more thoughtful flourishes here is the way Palmer plays with the notion of debt and investment. Jack Lowden and Martin McCann in Calibre. Up for a bit of mock-macho manoeuvres before the onslaught of parenthood, Vaughn agrees to go on a deerstalking trip in the Highlands with his friend Marcus (Michael Fassbender-lookey-likey Martin McCann), a chum from the boys’ boarding school days who now makes serious bank in the financial sector. In the foundational first section, we meet Vaughn (Lowden), a nice regular guy living in a smart street near the park in Glasgow, who is about to become a father with his partner (Olivia Morgan). Can you stream the Thriller movie Calibre, directed by Matt Palmer & starring Ian Pirie, Jack Lowden, Martin McCann & Tony Curran on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon. That’s a point worth stressing should you consider watching this on Netflix, given on that platform it’s so much easier to skip on to something else if the opening 10 minutes of a film fails to grab you. Just when you might expect Palmer to break out the fake blood, the film goes unexpectedly, and quite literally quiet, after a somewhat plodding first third. Anchored by a brace of range-flaunting performances from its two leads Jack Lowden and Martin McCann, Calibre evolves unexpectedly into a moral puzzle about the limits of friendship and forgiveness.
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