Even after their tragic, fateful, mistake there is a feeling of inevitability. And maybe you’re not meant to be sympathetic towards them. You never feel sympathy for either Vaughn or Carter, at least I didn’t. Northern Irish actor Martin McCann (Carter) plays his old buddy and is definitely an actor to watch as his career continues. Jack Lowden (Vaughn) will be familiar to fans of big budget British TV costume dramas, appearing in a recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace. But he’s backed by strong performances from the two leads, playing childhood friends whose lives are about to fall apart following a big mistake. That’s testament to the director, Matt Palmer, who also wrote the dark screenplay. On its release Calibre won an award for the best British film at the Edinburgh Film Festival. A Netflix Original film with hints of the classic movie Shallow Grave Calibre has strong writing and tight directing that produces an award winning performance It creeps across them like smothering peat smoke eventually suffocating the two lead protagonists in very different ways.

But instantly you notice the sinister, hostile bristling at their arrival. You see the villager’s on-the-surface indifference to the arrival of two out-of-town Central Belt blokes. There’s a beautiful bleakness to the close knit rural Highland community portrayed in the film. You can almost taste the thick acrid smoke drifting from the television screen, slowly enveloping you, you are drawn in to this thriller. It to is a slow burner just like a smoky peat fire sat in a Highland hearth. There are no showy, explosive car chases or action packed stunts. Calibre, set in a damp, dark, brooding and claustrophobic Scottish Highlands is no different. The dark smoke with a distinctive earthy aroma permeates everything. In fact it doesn’t really burn instead it smolders, a fiery glow at its heart.

Review calibre 2018