Photograph: Anne Binckebanck / NetflixĪmongthe more thoughtful flourishes here is the way Palmer plays with the notion of debt and investment. Jack Lowden and Martin McCann in Calibre. Up for a bit of mock-macho manoeuvres before the onslaught of parenthood, Vaughn agrees to go on a deerstalking trip in the Highlands with his friend Marcus (Michael Fassbender-lookey-likey Martin McCann), a chum from the boys’ boarding school days who now makes serious bank in the financial sector. In the foundational first section, we meet Vaughn (Lowden), a nice regular guy living in a smart street near the park in Glasgow, who is about to become a father with his partner (Olivia Morgan). That’s a point worth stressing should you consider watching this on Netflix, given on that platform it’s so much easier to skip on to something else if the opening 10 minutes of a film fails to grab you. Just when you might expect Palmer to break out the fake blood, the film goes unexpectedly, and quite literally quiet, after a somewhat plodding first third. Calibre is currently streaming on Netflix.Anchored by a brace of range-flaunting performances from its two leads Jack Lowden and Martin McCann, Calibre evolves unexpectedly into a moral puzzle about the limits of friendship and forgiveness. It sinks you into a grey area before stalking you into a corner. Calibre is a film with teeth and muscle but also a heart that bleeds for everyone. This is helped in no small part by Chris Wyatt’s carefully chosen cuts ensuring we see everything without ever seeing more than we should. Márk Györi’s camerawork seamlessly transitions from haunted Romanticism to a queasy but beautifully lit backwoods survivalism. The finale of the film is a slashed to the bone, teeth grinding half hour. Especially as Calibre speeds up towards its unthinkable and yet inevitable conclusion. Viewers wishing to pick a side will end up caught in a vice-like grip as neither side are truly right in their actions. Yet, the accidental tragedy of the film will have many indecisive about whether right and wrong even exist in this world. The locals’ disdain for the two men is easily understood. McCann and Lowden play their characters like fish trying to fit into a pond that’s already full up and half drained. A slow build with lots of carefully chosen words and set design mark this as the moment where there is no turning back. Yet it’s to his and the actors’ credit that the scene is as detailed as it is. ![]() Palmer could easily have filmed a hokey foreshadowing montage of the dinner. A night time burial is preceded by a bloody venison dinner in a blood-red room. Make no mistake though Calibre is as horrific as they come. Many films are wrongly mislabelled as thrillers when nothing supernatural or monstrous rears its head. A tirade by Logan’s brother Brian (Ian Pirie) feels passionate rather than heavy-handed but Palmer continually refers to the economic depression suffered by the Highlands in subtler ways. He does it with a sensitivity that working-class cinema hero Ken Loach would be proud of. However, where in John Boorman’s film the locals come across as rape-obsessed hicks, Palmer makes them figures of sympathy in Calibre. He balances this tautness on his knife edge plot.Ĭomparisons have already been drawn to Deliverance. From the moment Vaughn is harassed by a local in the pub Palmer makes the tension of the film felt. It is a grim film with little levity beyond the lads’ initial bluster. ![]() From there things spiral.Ĭalibre feels both inevitable and unbearable. However, at the last second the animal raises its head and Vaughn shoots a child hiker dead. Upon spotting a deer Vaughn lines up his shot. The next morning – much the worse for wear – the two pals set off to do some stalking. Upon arrival the timid Vaughn and coke fiend Marcus hit the pub where the locals are everything but hospitable barring successful farmer Logan (Tony Curran) and flirty local women. Old friends Vaughn (Jack Lowden, Dunkirk) and Marcus (Martin McCann, The Survivalist) are off to the Scottish Highlands for one last hurrah before Vaughn gets married to his newly pregnant fiancé. In Matt Palmer’s lean and mean debut feature Calibre stalking takes on a horrifying new meaning. ![]() Most will agree it is the stalking of the kill rather than the killing itself that is the best part of hunting. Ask any hunter from Ernest Hemingway to infamous sniper Carlos Hathcock. Hunting is often referred to as “stalking” by those with a knowledge of the controversial sport.
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