When Alice (Gillian Anderson), a middle-class businesswoman, meets Adam (Danny Dyer) a working-class surveillance expert, she invites him to a party. Thus begins a night that neither will ever forget. After encountering a group of locals on a country road, a shocking incident takes place that sees Adam lose an eye whilst Alice is brutally raped. Several weeks later, Alice crosses paths with one of their attackers...
I had heard a lot about this movie, although most of what I'd heard revolved around a scene near the end of the film involving Anderson's use of a gun barrel. For the most part, the violence in this movie was implied rather than shown. The rape itself is disturbing although we are treated to not just one showing of it but two (the second time, it is shown through the eyes of Anderson's attacker). This seemed slightly gratuitous to me.
Both of the main leads turn in great performances with special praise going out to Gillian Anderson. In all of the years watching "The X-Files" I never quite imagined that I'd see her in as powerful a role as this. It seems a shame then that they don't have any chemistry together. They just weren't convincing as two people who fell in lust with one another in the space of a few hours.
After the horror of the first act, the movie doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. We see the two victims planning their revenge (initiated by an extraordinary coincidence) and trying to come to terms with what has happened to them. However, there isn't really any substance to these scenes. Their planning of revenge simply consists of creeping around spying on their attackers, and the scenes in which they try to deal with their anguish don't work either as both characters aren't given enough depth for us to care about them.
The final scenes seem to come out of nowhere and are carried out in such a way that they're not satisfying to the audience. One of the bad guys suddenly gives a sympathetic story about why he did what he did - are we now meant to agree he had no other choice? One of the victims suddenly feels regret about what is happening to the attackers. Are we supposed to now feel the same? If there is an intended message, it isn't at all clear.
Ultimately this movie is a hollow experience. It doesn't engage the audience as it should and doesn't appear to know what exactly it's trying to say.
I had heard a lot about this movie, although most of what I'd heard revolved around a scene near the end of the film involving Anderson's use of a gun barrel. For the most part, the violence in this movie was implied rather than shown. The rape itself is disturbing although we are treated to not just one showing of it but two (the second time, it is shown through the eyes of Anderson's attacker). This seemed slightly gratuitous to me.
Both of the main leads turn in great performances with special praise going out to Gillian Anderson. In all of the years watching "The X-Files" I never quite imagined that I'd see her in as powerful a role as this. It seems a shame then that they don't have any chemistry together. They just weren't convincing as two people who fell in lust with one another in the space of a few hours.
After the horror of the first act, the movie doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. We see the two victims planning their revenge (initiated by an extraordinary coincidence) and trying to come to terms with what has happened to them. However, there isn't really any substance to these scenes. Their planning of revenge simply consists of creeping around spying on their attackers, and the scenes in which they try to deal with their anguish don't work either as both characters aren't given enough depth for us to care about them.
The final scenes seem to come out of nowhere and are carried out in such a way that they're not satisfying to the audience. One of the bad guys suddenly gives a sympathetic story about why he did what he did - are we now meant to agree he had no other choice? One of the victims suddenly feels regret about what is happening to the attackers. Are we supposed to now feel the same? If there is an intended message, it isn't at all clear.
Ultimately this movie is a hollow experience. It doesn't engage the audience as it should and doesn't appear to know what exactly it's trying to say.