A woman paid to watch others begins stalking one of the men she's been trailing in this thriller from Scotland. Jackie (Kate Dickie) is a woman who has buried herself in her work with a security company since the death of her husband and child. Jackie's work involves monitoring a crime-ridden corner of North Glasgow with a bank of closed circuit television cameras; after her shift is over, she either goes home or has an occasional assignation with a friend from work who isn't happy with his
wife. While watching the comings and goings in a run down apartment block, Jackie spies Clyde (Tony Curran), a handsome former jailbird who shares a shabby flat with his buddy Stevie (Martin Compston) and April (Natalie Press), Stevie's girlfriend. Jackie becomes fascinated with Clyde, and after carefully following his routines through her cameras she meets him face to face at a local bar, and soon lures him into a relationship. However, in time Clyde discovers neither love nor lust is the motivating factor behind Jackie's actions. The first feature film from award-winning director Andrea Arnold, Red Road received its world premier at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Like the Peeping Tom-paranoia of similar recent films Disturbia and Civic Duty, this finely crafted debut feature by Scottish writer/director Andrea Arnold packs a wallop.
With assured performers, handheld cameras and natural lighting -- the ABCs of the Dogme method -- [Andrea] Arnold has given this ambitious undertaking a provocative start.
[Director Arnold] drops the voyeurism theme almost entirely, a bait-and-switch that doesn't cripple Red Road so much as snip off its richest and eeriest thread.
It's sad that we live in a film world where the winner of 5 BAFTAs gets little to no press at all in the States and far-inferior films open on 4,000 screens. Don't let a movie this good slip away.
Ancorado pelas performances complexas de Dickie e Curran, o filme traz a diretora estreante Andrea Arnold como uma revelação a ser observada com atenção nos próximos anos.
A brilliantly conceived thriller that keeps us guessing right up to the very end, Red Road intrigues but frustrates by its slow development and often incomprehensible Scottish dialogue
A strange sort of map of the city [is] spread across these fragmented cubes of visual information. And there's also the metaphorical map of the characters' lives, where they're coming from and where they're going.
It's a jarring sensation, for a thriller not to be about the chase, or the mysterious force of evil lurking in the shadows, but about an intangible gulf dividing two people occupying the same room.
Though it's paced as a thriller, the film ultimately emerges as a haunting exploration of how grief can weigh on us, and the depths to which it can drive us.
Voyeurism, revenge, loss and healing - Age old issues brilliantly brought to life in this intense and suspenseful thriller. Kate Dickie's performance is brutally real as is the film itself, unsurprising really as this is part of a challenge from Dogme director Lars Von Trier as part of his The Advance Party manifesto.
The intrigue is almost unbearable (In the best possible way). I've been a big fan of Andrea Arnold for many years, although not always as a director, I fell in love with her as a young boy when she was in No 73 on Saturday mornings. Anyway - She's a great director now and this is a brilliant film, criminally overlooked it seems. Looking forward to seeing Fish Tank and to seeing the next of three The Advance Party films, starting with Morag McKinnon's Donkeys, if only I could find it. Great stuff!
There's something very appealing about withholding the full story from an audience until the end. If it's done right. With Red Road, it's not done very well. What the folks involved in this project wanted to do, I'm sure, is create suspense. Mission not accomplished. By the time you understand the whole story, you
really don't care.
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