ESP’s Mikey Clarke heads to the Showcase Cinema to attend a unique screening…
As an aspiring screenwriter and director, I jumped at the chance to attend the premiere of Last Passenger at Showcase – a British thriller co-written by Andy Love, who works here in Peterborough. Andy (a presenter at Ideal World) told me how the film made it onto the big screen.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said. “We had financial backing around five years ago for the film, but unfortunately the investors went bust. The Director/Co-Writer (Omid Nooshin) and I put together a trailer using just £500 to show the world our vision for the movie.
“The trailer was put onto YouTube and luckily that was enough for Pathe films and the British Film Institute to support us.”
The Showcase Cinema went all-out to make the event as extravagant as possible. Champagne and canapé’s were handed to the guests, before we walked down the red carpet.
At this point I was praying for the film to be as impressive as the pre-party. After all, I’m not the type of guy to say a poorly made film is good just because the writer is local.
Is Last Passenger worth the watch? Check out my review below…
Last Passenger (15)
We Brits are not the best when it comes to producing decent action thrillers. Remember 1997’s Downtime? Doubtful – not many people saw it. Downtime was supposed to be the British version of Die Hard, but it failed miserably. I feared Last Passenger was going to travel down a similar track and end up being an awful version of Unstoppable.
I was wrong.
This low budget indie tells the story of the six passengers aboard a midnight commuter train. It mainly focuses on the newly single Sarah (Kara Tointon), a widowed doctor named Lewis (Dougray Scott) and Lewis’ son Max. The train soon becomes hijacked and with the police seeming powerless to stop it, it’s up to the mismatched commuters to get together, put aside their differences, and put an end to the horror.
I must give credit to the writers and director for cleverly making the decision of the villain being a faceless enemy. He’s nothing more than a shadowy, random mad man and all the scarier for it.
What works best with this gripping and intense film is that the characters carry the movie. We care about the people onscreen and therefore want them to survive this ordeal. Do they? Head to the Showcase Cinema to find out.
Mikey Clarke
Premiere Photos: Andrew James for ESP Magazine www.photographybyandrewjames.co.uk
Genre: Thriller
Length: 1hr 37mins
Cast: Dougray Scott, Kara Tointon, Iddo Goldberg, Lindsay Duncan, Iddo Goldberg & David Schofield
Director: Omid Nooshin
See it if you liked: Unstoppable & The Taking of Pelham 123 [youtube id=”hLLaByFI62Y” width=”600″ height=”350″]