Director Julien Gilbey is perhaps best known for his third feature, Rise Of The Footsolidier and recently for editing the Danny Dyer zom-com shambles Doghouse. So, expectations aside, what's the deal? Ed is the good guy - an American special forces operative, whose team has been massacred somewhere near the Canadian border by a group of assassins led by bad guy Charles Toll. Years later Toll resurfaces in the UK to smuggle a new stimulant drug - the comically titled 'Unseen Force' - out of the country. When Ed and his own team of misfits catch up with them, there's obviously hell to pay and much low budget gunplay ensues.
Best treated as a boozy watch with a bunch of friends, Reckoning Day manages quite an astounding body count matched only by the number of amusingly terrible lines ("Why don't you shut up?", "Why don't you fuck off?") delivered with all the conviction of a school production of Shakespeare. There's some endearing and similarly amusing technical improvisation too (expanded on in the DVD extras) as the terrible getaway car - a 1986 Vauxhall Cavalier - is dubiously justified as a low profile option. Upgraded with a 400 bhp TVR engine "it's a wolf in sheep's clothing". So too when Gilbey explains how he put some bloody porridge on his Dad's head so he could 'shoot' him without attaching a squib to the old fella, you have to admire their tenacity.
Clearly a fan of everything from Sam Peckinpah to Sam Raimi, Gilbey actually does a fair approximation of the former's style, albeit without the substance to back up the violence, and some slow motion deaths intercut with real-time action are effective given the budget. Likewise, the OTT squibs recall the splattery excess of The Wild Bunch whereas later scenes go one further, verging on 80s splatter. The trouble is, simply copying Peckinpah's editing techniques doesn't make your film in any way comparable in terms of entertainment or proficiency and Gilbey's effort can't live up to the weight of its allusions. Less Peckinpah it's more like watching yourself playing soldiers as a kid with a £30 BB gun... and lots of fake blood.
It's a profoundly silly film and of course all involved seem to know this, but there's an integrity in the pillaging of favourite action movies to construct some form of homage on a tiny budget that almost wins you over.
Extras:
- A slightly (and unaccountably) smug interview with the director
- Feature length commentary
Both reasonably entertaining accounts of micro-budget film making, particularly from a technical standpoint.
Reckoning Day is out on UK DVD from the 14th September and you can buy it on Amazon UK here.
Watch the trailer here.