2006
Director: Andrea Arnold
Viewed: February 24, 2008
Format: DVD - Tartan Video (2007)
Red Road is a B-movie thriller shamelessly struggling to achieve something more profound and intricate than mere tension. It doesn’t quite make it there—let’s call it a B+-movie—but the naturalistic bent to its cool, shabby style serves its ambitions. Director Arnold presents crucial revelations with an elegant touch, and occasionally finds moments of sublime oddness. Unfortunately, these pleasures are few and far between. Most of Red Road is a tangle of competing themes: the British surveillance state, the nature of revenge and redemption, videographic perception versus knowledge, and so on. A little focus might have helped.