Not Safe for Work (2014)

The setting is high-rise with a huge law firm on an upper floor. A name partner (Christian Clemenson, fine as always) has two big clients overwhelming his staff as the movie opens: Denning Pharmaceutical, fighting a crippling lawsuit; and Mrs. Gambizzi, a Mafia wife turned snitch. The action takes place in the course of about 24 hours. After the office closes, while Mrs. Gambizzi is quietly meeting with Mr. Name Partner, an assassin heads into the high-rise building with both death and destruction in mind. Simply called The Killer, he is played with mesmerizing menace by JJ Feild- - a British actor whose performance here ranks (almost) with James Fox as the Jackal and Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in terms of bone-chilling bad guys.The Killer is not happy to discover that the office isn't quite as empty as he'd been lead to believe. As he coolly disables the elevator and outside access, he has to execute several people. As he wheels one body off in a handy ergonomic chair, he phones someone and speaks in ambiguously specific terms about the head count: "Three, plus the one we talked about." The audience is not really left to wonder which of the four corpses is "the one," because it's easy to assume that Mrs. Gambizzi was the target of a mob vendetta.But was she the target? In what I think is a very clever twist, that question raises the film well above the gangster level. The Killer has an opponent, a young paralegal who had been fired that very day but observed a curious briefcase-hand-off in the lobby, and followed the suspicious recipient back up to the law offices. Played as a quick-thinking, quick-moving modern-day paladin by Max Minghella, he is the solid center of this tense and tightly constructed thriller, which has more than a few moments when BAM! an edit jolts you in your seat, which the music has kept you at the edge of. Director Joe Johnston and the writers (Adam Mason and Simon Boyes) leave enough unsaid to allow the audience to begin to wonder if the relentless, cold-blooded Killer really was sent by the Mafia, or was it the other client, Big Pharma? And when that knife-edge question dawns on you, the tension is suddenly, thrillingly doubled because you're faced with this question: which of those two entities is more powerful and dangerous?

It's billed as a Comedy Drama and as I always do with new programmes, I watched the first episode. The pace of the episode was so slow that I felt it actually stopped a few times. It was billed as a comedy but the writers forgot to put any funny lines into the script. With gratuitous drug taking, stealing and drinking its just like any new programmes from first time Writers, Producers etc who think they know what the people want but miss by a country mile. There's no real back story so we don't care who the characters are and why they're being moved to the Northampton branch of the business and their attempts to get back to the Head Office in London. There is constant use of F**k and a few times C**t is used by both male and female characters. I thinks the Writers are going for the shock factor with all the swearing, as they believe that it's what younger people want to hear but even they don't like the over use of the F word and most people, both young or old, actually hate the C word. I'll consider watching episode 2 too see if it improves but I don't hold out much hope.

This short movie (about 75 minutes) takes place mostly on the 34th floor office of a law firm called RBE. The protagonist Thomas is a paralegal who is fired from his job for releasing some information in a law-brief. On his exit from the building he notices an exchange of a briefcase between two men and he follows one of them back to his office. What ensues next is a cat and mouse game between him and the intruder who turns out to be a contract-killer.The first ten minutes of the movie lets us think that Thomas is a loser with a smart girlfriend and then moves to show that Thomas is not as dumb as he is meant to be. The plot twists in the movie are fairly predictable with some small plot holes which diluted the energy of the movie for me but not enough to stop me from watching it till the end (saw it on its TV premiere). A major twist in the end left me unhappy wondering about futility of doing the right thing. JJ Fields who plays the killer is a fairly unknown actor and he does a great job in his role. For some reason he kept reminding me of Hiddleston's Loki. :( Christian Clemenson (the laywer/attorney with Asperger's syndrome in the TV show 'Boston Legal') is the senior partner who is also stuck in the office. You have the mandatory 'hold-the-girl-friend-as-hostage' scenario at the end of the movie which was my real sore point with NSFW.However, this is a good time pass if you have nothing else to watch on TV.

Here we have a much used premise of killer in building chasing innocent but very inventive office worker.Done may times before but even with the relatively short running time of just over an hour,this movie packs a lot of punches.Good story,tension.bang up to date technically and a joy to watch.And of course well acted throughout.Check it out if you like fast paced,well made jumpy thrillers. Similar in a lot of ways to a previously unknown thriller called RUN with a young Patrick Dempsey being chased by hit men,but always one step ahead by quick thinking and improvisation.You don.t need gratuitous violence,a bucket full of profanities and OTT action to create a quality thriller.Not Safe to Work is a perfect example of this!