A Lonely Place To Die Released 7 September 2011 Director Julian Gilbey Starring Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Kate MacGowan Writer(s) Julian Gilbey, Will Gilbey Producer(s) Michael Loveday Origin United Kingdom Running Time 98 minutes Genre Action, horror, thriller Rating TBC

50

Pish.

Were the Scottish Tourist Board to have funded A Lonely Place To Die, then you would feel like it was money well spent. Grand, cinematic, sweeping shots of the stark, scabrous Scottish mountains briefly banish deep-fried mars bars from your mind, as the thing you most associate with Scotland. Director Julian Gilbey, opens this mountaineering-based film with unsettling close-ups of abseilers climbing a mountain-face so creviced, one suspects someone has built a Mount Rushmore style monument to Gordon Ramsay deep in the Scottish highlands. As is many writer’s wont, it opens with a tense, exciting incident and without giving too much away, let’s just say a climber or two end up hanging like Newtonesque apples from these forbidding features. The opening does recall Cliffhanger, which is a pity as you keep expecting Sly to stick out a rescuing hand, but in your heart of hearts you know that Stallone would be the last person to show up in this British funded film.

Had he though, he would have compromised the realism the director was clearly going for. The film tells the story of a group of climbers trekking through the Scottish highlands while hoping to climb its most notorious mountain faces. While trekking, they happen upon a foreign girl, trapped in an underground chamber, with only an airhole to survive. Rescuing her, the group decide to escort her back to civilisation, not an easy decision considering the treacherous path that lay ahead. It transpires that the girl is part of an elaborate ransom demand and now there are murderous stalkers determined to recover their golden ticket at any cost.

The mostly British cast are familiar without being household names. Idris Elba (or Stringer Bell as he will be forever known) has a surprisingly small role while Sean Harris gives a typically malicious performance. One of the characters, sporting an elusive accent, is naggingly familiar until you suddenly realise ‘It’s only flippin Angel from Home and Away’. Melissa George, who spent years watching character after character mysteriously disappear in the black hole that is Yabbie Creek must have been thinking ‘Here we go again’ as the climbers slowly get picked off as they descend the Scottish peaks.

The premise, realistic style and awe-inspiring setting were a solid foundation upon which to build a successful (in artistic terms) film. Where I feel it is let down is a bland script, typical drama class British acting and some messy story telling and directing. While drama and tension were clearly the number one priorities here, the dialogue and characters lack wit and development. One never cares for them really which is crucial when the audience are supposed to root for their survival. The director hints at back story for some of the characters but never clarifies it or the nature of their relationships. There are also some shabby directorial decisions like when Angel from Home and Away is injured on a river bed and it cuts to a scene of her in an underground chamber and then back to her on the river bed. What?? Also, when she is on her own and picks up a cut rope, there is no need for her to say out loud ‘It’s cut’. It’s pretty obvious.

There are many examples of these kind of flabby scenes. When the group are in the woods, they hear what is conspicuously the sound of a little girl’s voice. After hearing it, one of them asks, "What does it sound like?", to which another asks, "An animal?". You feel like roaring at the screen, “It’s a feckin girl, obviously!” Then another says, “I hear it” and you are thinking ‘Well, of course you hear it, it's audible’. After they discover the trap door to the underground chamber, and are about to rescue the little girl, one of them picks up a substantial branch ready to smack whatever emerged from the hole. For the second time during the viewing, I had to stop myself shouting, “It’s a feckin little girl”. The branch was hardly necessary.

It is this kind of scene that sometimes makes A Lonely Place To Die feel like an improvisation by a drama class. The dialogue is littered with naked attempts by a sub-standard writer to capture naturalistic banter. There are a number of lazy stereotypes that I feel are worth repeating, simply to out the writer. A typical extract being, “Sandwiches, the pinnacle of British cuisine. No wonder the French hate us so much.” Ha ha. Or another, “We are English, we leave friendly fire to the Yanks”. Brilliant.

The laziness doesn’t stop there either. The assassins out to recover the girl, who being Scottish, just have to have a few nips of whiskey, while biding their time in the long grass. The whiskey, must have been jarring to their palettes however, as their official tasting notes declared it to be ‘pish’. This writing is so lazy. There is no way a sniper would drink whiskey before sniping. As Gay Byrne, Chairman of the National Safety Authority would tell you, drink impairs your judgement, vision and reaction time. If you are going for a drink, leave the sniper rifle at home or have a designated sniper. Could you live with the shame?

A Lonely Place To Die is a decent movie, I just suspect it would be grating for seasoned cinema goers. There is nothing new here stylistically or in the premise, its only compelling feature being the magnificent Scotland. It is action packed and tense and does have a certain heavy atmosphere throughout, which is an achievement, although I feel the film would have been better served had it been a bit more horror and a bit less thriller. I failed to fall under the spell of this movie due to substandard writing, a lack of originality and unremarkable acting. It would certainly entertain many but ultimately I don’t think it will capture the imagination of anyone. In short, it’s pish.

- Eoin Murphy