Reconnu coupable

From the opening scene it is beautifully shot, with a cool and hard style plus superb casting. Highlighting the senseless horror in our current society and one mans determination not to let sleeping dogs lie. It took me through several very strong emotions.

Jonny Lee Miller plays Denis, a rich pilot with a pretty pregnant wife, Valerie (Paloma Baeza) whose life is turned upside down when a thief breaks into their humble home and maliciously shoots Valerie and leaves Dennis to cope with the lasting sadness of her murder. Denis is not satisfied when Valerie's killer, notorious thief Ricky Barnes (Andy Serkis), is thrown into an Alcatraz style prison for 20 years. For Denis, this sentence isn't enough; as he achingly muses, if he were given the option of visiting his wife for 2 hours once a week, a month or even once a year, that would be better than what he has now… nothing. He cannot get past his need for revenge; not even his baby girl, delivered by C-section, can coax him out of this fog. And so he devises a plan to get himself thrown into the same high-security prison as Barnes, and get his revenge.

Revenge is the central theme of this fantastic film, written by Nick Perry and directed by Gillies MacKinnon. It isn't always an edge-of-your-seat drama, more it is an intrinsic look into the creation, hungering and devouring need for revenge…. The high-stakes drama comes in the last half hour or so, when Denis's plan is tangible as he gets thrown into Barnes's prison. The film doesn't try to show that light exists at the end of the tunnel, or that every cloud has a silver lining. Denis's thirst for reprisal is depressing; he has such tunnel-vision that not even his baby girl and the hint of a fresh start can coax him out of his ebb. And the really sad thing is that as we watch Denis strive toward his realized vengeance, we as the viewer know that what comes after he succeeds is not going to be pretty… he will be left with nothing, no life, nothing to drive him, just the realization of all that he has lost. So while rooting for Denis to get payback on the evil Ricky Barnes, there is also a devastating knowledge that things will only get worse from here on in.

Johnny Lee Miller is a relatively unknown actor who never made good on his break-out performance in the film "Trainspotting"; if he is known at all, it is as Angelina Jolie's first ex-husband whom she constantly says she regrets divorcing. Miller doesn't always captivate and command the screen, but he is adequate in this lead role as a tough, driven lover whose sadness is really eating him alive. The real star in this film is the wicked Andy Serkis, best known for his role as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films and as the monkey in another Jackson film "King Kong". Surprise, surprise; Serkins can actually act sans the tight-blue lycra and CGI wires – his brilliance is measured by his loathsomeness – and trust me, it's always at breaking point!

Great little straight to video gem that would go totally unnoticed if it wasn't always on cable television.

I haven't seen the film but I was in it as an extra. I often wondered what happened to the film as I never saw in a video shop or advertised anywhere. I'm the prison officer in the courtroom scene on Andy Serkis' left. I was taken aback when Andy reacted violently during the scene as he was taken down after sentencing. They never tell the extras anything. In one take I was flung to the floor in another take he caught me in the ribs with his elbow. I was in agony for weeks. Andy Serkis definitely owes me a drink for that. LOL But I was impressed at the way both Johnny Lee Miller worked together and the way they repeated the intensity required in the scene and then switched off and started talking about football as soon as the cut was called. I'm looking forward to seeing the film soon.

A pilots pregnant wife is killed by a band of thugs who break into their home. The gang is caught and sent off to prison. Wanting to see that "justice" is done the pilot stages his own death and then gets himself arrested so he can hunt the killers in the prisons into which they have been sent.

To be honest the story is a bit clichéd with the plot taking some obvious paths once things are set in motion. Normally that would be a bad thing but here the film works largely thanks to a very good cast of mostly unknown actors. The stand out is Andy Serkis, best known for playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies. Here he's the head of the nasty band and his vileness seems to drip off the screen. If you want to know why Peter Jackson chose him to play the tortured creature in the big budgeted epic look no further. Serkis isn't on screen much until the final portion of the film, but his evilness in the early part of the film hangs over everything like a dark cloud.

Definitely worth a look for those who want an undemanding thriller, and those who want to see what Andy Serkis is capable of when he isn't doing just a computer generated character. 6.5 out of 10.

I am sure that this kind of film, if made in the seventies, would have been a very exciting yarn. This one is OK, but from the beginning, I don't understand why those criminals, and not simple thugs, chose precisely the home of this man to commit a gratuitous murder. Why? The villain if of course excellent in terms of cast, but I don't understand why he killed the main character's wife...Why? Because, I repeat, those hoodlums looked very like professionals. The rest of the film is just OK for me, not more. Gritty, yes; tough, yes; a good time wester, yes. It is a British film, not American, and there are not so many British crime movies those days, since the late nineties. Or very few are really good. Most of them are lousy.