Red Road (2007)

I love Andrea Arnold. I'm not sure she has put a foot wrong in her career so far, although I've not seen 'Wuthering Heinghts'. Red Road is right up there with 'American Honey' for me as her best work. Kate Dicke was exceptional as the CCTV Camera operator who decides to go vigilante to get closure. There is one scene that is so moving I nearly lost it. How Arnold interweaves moments of extreme brutality and harshness with such powerful tenderness is amazing to watch. She's one of the best modern British film-makers. I'm off to seek out part 2 of the 'Advance Party' trilogy.

This low-budget Scottish indie is worth looking up. It moves quickly, with engagement and suspense, and gives us some things to think about in the age of Edward Snowden and omnipresent surveillance cams.The backstory isn't laid out for us at first. We quickly learn that Jackie's husband and child are dead, but not how; she is joylessly hooking up with a married co-worker in his car. Her life is focused on the people she observes through her law enforcement job: she operates a bank of urban CCTV security cameras trained on streets, shops, back lots, and apartment blocks, watching a gritty part of town for crime in real time. They remind me of the set of "Rear Window". She can move the cameras, look at windows or doorways, zoom in, follow someone from place to place. She watches the little dramas of their actual lives.Then, monitoring an encounter in a back lot to see if it is a rape in progress or a trick being turned, she recognizes a man. His name is Clyde. She had thought he was in jail ... we aren't told for what ... but she is told he has gotten out early for good behavior. It shakes her. He lives in the area she can observe, in the Red Road block, a grim high-rise full of people living on the edge. He hangs out in the local pub; he drives a locksmith's van. She watches him. She feels the need to do something. She tracks him, and his associates, first by camera - then in person, into his habitat.It's not clear what she intends. The suspense as she pursues whatever plan she has, if there is a plan and not just impulse, goes close to the edge of what is bearable. We don't know what she is risking. We don't know what sort of man he is. Is he an evil man, who deserves whatever happens to him? Is he planning more crimes, and is she protecting society from him? Is he a decent man, persecuted by a rogue police agent? Is it all more complex? At a certain point there are signs that she may be attracted to him, or is that just adrenaline? Or pretense? Or a response to her shell of isolation and routines falling apart?The film keeps us guessing and mostly avoids thriller clichés, arriving at a resolution that is maybe slightly tinny but mostly satisfying. It's worth some effort to dig this up.

This is a fairly simple film of a CCTV operator who notices a face from her past that she didn't want to see again. It follows Jackie as she infiltrates the life of the man from her past and tries to gain her revenge. It's a slow moving film and maybe it could have been cut down by 20 minutes but it does at least steadily improve towards to end. It boasts good performances from a strong cast which helps keep interest at the beginning. Red Road is not a particularly nice film to watch, the setting is grim and it's a darkly lit film which only adds to the general depressing nature of the film. There is nothing to lighten the mood and it also contains one of if not the most explicit sex scenes I've ever seen on film. However if you can get through the first hour then it does turn into a very effective drama. For a low budget film this is a very good effort and is worth at least one viewing.

Jackie works at a city surveillance service in Glasgow. One night she see on one of the monitors a face from her past, a man just released from prison. This causes a major disruption in her bleak and hollow life. We know it has to do with something ugly and painful that happened long ago, and we fear for Jackie, as she starts taking more and more risks in an effort to get closer to that person.I saw this movie at my local videostore. A few months ago I saw and liked Fish Tank, the latest feature film by director Andrea Arnold, so I decided to give it a go. I was not disappointed. The acting was strong, and the story-telling gripping and thought-provoking.I find a similar feel in both movies, stories with female protagonists who cope with hurt and glum outlooks. Jackie is a much more extreme character than the girl in Fish Tank, but I'm pleased to find the same warmth and compassion underneath that hard shell.The world is such a scary place these days that cynicism and hopelessness feel like the easy way out in too many stories. It is refreshing to find narratives were hope is allowed to have the last word.