Powerful

Perfect cast and a good story

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A script this poor should never have been made. There is an attempt at social commentary, monied classes playing psychopathic games with the underclass simply because they can. There is an attempt to tick the thriller genre boxes, but all terribly clichéd - a jump across rooftops, flashing red tracker lights, a stalk through a nightclub (and switched identities that resolve this), hiding in the stalls in a toilet... There is not one original thought or scene in this whole film. The dialogue is full of clichés - "I am your friend" - and often lacks plausibility. For example, the protagonist is enraged when he discovers his sister has run up a debt of 12,000 pounds. The hunters offer him exactly 12,000 pounds to be hunted. When he calls to accept, he asks: "How much are you offering again?" The theme seems to take issue with the corrupting influence of money but has a flippant attitude towards male prostitution. This kind of puerile writing makes it impossible to talk about the performances, the actors simply have nothing to work with. This is a po-faced, poorly executed film, the main achievement being to confirm that whatever talents Jobson has, screen writing is not one of them. Two stars for some nice photography of one of my favourite cities.

In Edinburgh, the teenager Sean Macdonald (James Anthony Pearson) lives a life without perspective with his sister Alice Kelly (Liz White). Out of the blue, Sean discovers that Alice owes twelve thousand pounds to dangerous people that are forcing her to travel to Amsterdam to traffic drugs. However, he is contacted by two men, Alistair Raskolnikov (Dougray Scott) and Jamie Stewart (Alastair Mackenzie) that offer twelve thousand pounds to him to play hide and seek for twelve hours with them. If their hunting fails, Sean would earn the amount on the next morning. Sean accepts but sooner he finds that Alistair is a sadistic paranoid killer and he needs to escape not only for the money, but to survive."New Town Killers" has a promising and engaging beginning, but unfortunately has also a silly and flawed conclusion. The plot has many flaws, and Sean would be in trouble in the end, driving a car with a dead body in the trunk and leaving his fingerprints everywhere. There is a shallow clichés explanation of the reasons for the insane behavior of Alistair and is impressive how a janitor is able to access the computer protected by a password the way Sean does. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Pelo Prazer de Matar" ("For the Pleasure of Killing")

Richard Jobson - one-time front man with seminal Scottish punk band Skids, musician, songwriter, poet, vocalist, chat show interviewer, film critic - has latterly turned screenwriter and director.As a long-term fan, I feel have to be honest enough to admit that I didn't really engage with his debut feature, "16 Years of Alcohol." Not my thing, despite respecting the work. However, this gritty, dynamic take on "Hounds of Zaroff/The Most Dangerous Game/Hard Target" territory is a bit of a stunner.Clearly shot on a shoestring budget, Jobson offsets the financial limitations with some stylishly nervy camera-work and a cracking script that piles on the tension throughout. Even when location shooting some of the more deprived and desolate areas of Edinburgh, he succeeds in doing so with a sensitive and almost loving rendering. It's the mark of a craftsman.The performances are top notch, shot through with combinations of varying intensities of evil (Scott and Stewart) and pathos (Pearson and White). Everything rings true - apart, perhaps, for Scott on occasion, who has moments where his psychopathic villain comes very close to lurching into an almost grand guignol pantomime performance. Notably, the cliché he offers to explain why he does what he does ("Because I can") is a little familiar from overuse in any number of generic psycho-thrillers from the past. It was hackneyed, the script didn't need it.However, it's a cool and well-paced chase flick with enough shocks, twists and turns to grip the attention. In the last fifteen minutes or so momentum does seem to stutter a bit, but it's a small point.Someone somewhere should invest Jobson with a budget and some resources. He's a rare and diverse talent and the sort of person creative mainstream cinema can never have too many of. Who needs Avatar when you can have this? Or more to the point, who needs Avatar?

One of the most creepy, scaring and ultimately thrilling films I've seen for a long time, New Town Killers benefits from some amazing performances, not least by Dougray Scott, who was never this menacing in Desperate Housewives (;-) LOL).His presence on screen is brooding and claustrophobic, a real tour de force as a troubled soul with some very strange habits and preferences - and the rest of the cast more than stands up to be counted alongside him.Jobson's edgy, jumpy camera style simply adds to the tension, and by the end of the film, if you don't have clammy hands and find yourself short of breath as a result of feeling you are IN the movie, then I challenge you to check for a pulse. Really really good.