Former TV director David Jackson makes his feature debut with this earnest, technically assured piece of downbeat British social realism. The story is about a middle-aged guy living an almost feral existence at the margins of society who is forced to reconnect with his estranged teenaged son.
The film looks good, and evokes the wild beauty of England’s south coast, thanks to some great location work by cinematographer Ben Cole. Francis Magee delivers his lead performance with conviction, and there is a nice humorous cameo by Doon Mackichan as his neighbour. The problem is that the storytelling is unconvincing: there is a clash between the realist style and the patent unreality in much of the narrative. Moreover, the film winds up with some very naive assumptions about how easy it is in the UK to trick the police and evade criminal charges relating to firearms.
At the centre of the story is Francis (Magee), who lives in a chaotic caravan on wasteland near Hastings. Out of the blue, his ex-partner Kaye (Robin Weaver) arrives, announces she’s going off to live with her new love, dumps their teenage son Julian (Harper Jackson) with him – and then leaves. Julian appears to have a suitcase and bedroll, so may have suspected something of the sort. Later, Julian shows up at the local school, but the paperwork for that seems minimal or nonexistent. As for Francis, he appears to be a poacher, making enough cash to scrape a living and also – somehow – enough money to put up enough for a rental deposit on a nicer place in the local caravan site.
The point of the story is the growing, deepening affection between Francis and Julian, and this is managed competently. But the plotline about Francis’s guns predictably follows Chekhov’s rule about what happens to a firearm produced in act one, and the love-interest storylines for both father and son are contrived.
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