Calibre (2018)

Another Netflix Original film- actually, I wonder if when reviewing films such as this if I should apply seperate criteria to them. Not that they are exactly straight-to-video films with all the b-movie connotations of the VHS era that applies, but clearly neither are they, generally speaking, big movies that you would watch at the cinema. Although we are all paying a subscription every month for Netflix so are, yes, paying to watch them, neither are we paying cinema ticket-prices or digital-rental prices, especially when, if we watch enough of them in a month, that subscription price basically makes the price of each film pretty much negligible.

I guess what I’m saying is, if they are almost essentially free, how much slack should I possibly cut a film, if any? Or alternatively, is it fair to judge a film like Calibre against some other big-budget Hollywood thriller? Maybe that’s a debate for some later date.

Calibre, meanwhile, is a very good, very effective thriller- it would be rather easy, albeit lazy, to describe it as being like Deliverance in Scotland, but it is, so there you go, I went and did it. Two freinds, one of whom has a wife who is expecting a baby (what is this, two films in a row now, is there some kind of pregnancy trend/trope going on under my nose here?) go to the Scottish Highlands for a hunting trip. After a first night at the remote locale having some unwise, drunken misadventures with local girls that complicate things later, they go out on the hunting trip and things go horribly wrong.

The leads, Jack Lowden and Martin McCann, are very good, and the taut script and direction offer ever-increasing tension. It really is quite palpable and riveting at times. Initially attracted to the film because of its locale (my annual holidays in the Scottish Highlands ensure I love to watch films set up there) the setting is really hardly incidental to the plot, to tell the truth- it could be set anywhere fairly remote, be it a wilderness area in America or some isolated spot in Eastern Europe. The whole isolation/mysterious/suspicious locals thing is the driving force- indeed, for awhile there I was almost expecting the film to slip into Wicker Man territory, but I’d be spoiling things going into much further detail so I’ll leave it there.

Special mention for Tony Curran, too, who is simply great here. I had that nagging ‘where have I seen him before?’ thing bugging me throughout the damn thing, and it was only later that I released he was one of the regulars in the tv show Defiance a few years back (under considerable make-up, to be fair to my ignorance).

Well worth a watch, anyway. If Netflix could perhaps apply some quality control to all these Netflix Originals that would ensure decent films like this get produced more often, then I think the whole Netflix Originals/b-movies/Hollywood mainstream comparisons would largely be a moot point. This is a great little thriller and I’d love to see more.

And yes, all that Scottish scenery is great, too.