Daniel Wolfe directs Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron and Gary Lewis in this British thriller where a young couple must outrun the Pakistani relatives of the girl and their hired white thugs who intend to perform an “honour killing.”

I usually score movies on how much I would want to rewatch them. This is so unrelentingly grim and seedy that I had to change the metric slightly. Apart from one incongruous breathless caravan dance sequence to Patti Smith’s Horses there is scant here to enjoy on a second watch. The dark, misty depiction of the North is a little too extreme but certainly captivating, the constant bearing down of the threat utterly gripping. Race, religion, poverty, crime is given a callous review in passing. The lead performance by Sameena Jabeen Ahmed is convincing, you do have to wonder why the British film industry hasn’t further capitalised on such an outstanding debut? The saddest part of this very miserable film is the lovers on the run seem on to the final ebb of their affair, in less heightened circumstances they probably would have broken up and returned to their families without threat or coercion by the doomed night we enter their lives. Whatever thrill and happiness has been used up.

7

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