This film's Edinburgh set crime thriller, which dips into murky chase torture at times has a sense that 'Lola' (the modern-ish German classic) is going to be parodied. Obviously pitched at being outside of actual reality, where wealthy landlords, pimps or drug dealers (known in the film as 'private bankers') not only extort their penniless customers but also bait and taunt them, as in some cruel, sadistic game. Unfortunately, this is no The Third Man (shadowy sinister characters lurking on dark corners), Lola (the 'chase' seems to be mainly driving about in a Jaguar saloon) whilst The Trainspotting vibes resonate most. Except, there simply aren't the oddly likable, charismatic characters in that, for a start. There's quite a few Hitchcockian twists with a silent, weaving camera teasing us, though. It seems that the whole thing passed me by without making much of an impression. Not sure exactly where it fell down, maybe a bit in each. I daresay I'll have forgotten it by tomorrow. There have been US equivalents that have worked better, maybe for being more villainous, or better written, or better everything. It's not a bad effort, though and worth watching if it's free and not much else is on. Equally, it won't sink the indie Brit film scene but very definitely, unlike Trainspotting, won't set it alight either.

In Edinburgh, the teenager Sean Macdonald (James Anthony Pearson) lives a life without perspective with his sister Alice Kelly (Liz White). Out of the blue, Sean discovers that Alice owes twelve thousand pounds to dangerous people that are forcing her to travel to Amsterdam to traffic drugs. However, he is contacted by two men, Alistair Raskolnikov (Dougray Scott) and Jamie Stewart (Alastair Mackenzie) that offer twelve thousand pounds to him to play hide and seek for twelve hours with them. If their hunting fails, Sean would earn the amount on the next morning. Sean accepts but sooner he finds that Alistair is a sadistic paranoid killer and he needs to escape not only for the money, but to survive."New Town Killers" has a promising and engaging beginning, but unfortunately has also a silly and flawed conclusion. The plot has many flaws, and Sean would be in trouble in the end, driving a car with a dead body in the trunk and leaving his fingerprints everywhere. There is a shallow clichés explanation of the reasons for the insane behavior of Alistair and is impressive how a janitor is able to access the computer protected by a password the way Sean does. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Pelo Prazer de Matar" ("For the Pleasure of Killing")

I hadn't heard anything about this British Independent film before I saw it come up on TV last week. There are some very good Indie films out there and on the face of it this one looked pretty good, but more of that later. The setting is the urban environment of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.A young man, Sean Macdonald, is down on his luck. He has lived in a flat (or apartment if you prefer) with his sister Alice since their mother passed away. Sean finds it hard to hold down a job and Alice has managed to get herself into a large amount of debt. Even Sean's best friend, Sam, cannot help him out. So when two men, Alistair Raskolnikov and Jamie Stewart offer him the chance to win enough money to pay off all of Alice's debts he finds himself with no option but to take them up on the offer. All he has to do is hide from the two of them from 9PM until 9AM the following morning. What follows is a dangerous game of cat and mouse in the back-streets of Edinburgh. I will not tell you who wins, but there are many twists and turns along the way.What we end up with is a gritty and at times violent chase thriller with plenty of excitement and some interesting twists and turns. That's the first half of the movie. Unfortunately the second half does not live up to the promise of the first. There are decent performances from all of the leading cast, so honourable mentions go to Dougray Scott as Alistair Raskolnikov, Alastair Mackenzie as Jamie Stewart, James Anthony Pearson as Sean Macdonald, Liz White as Alice Kelley and Charles Mnene as Sam. Oh and there's also a brief scene with Karen Gillan, now starring along side Matt Smith on TV in Dr Who.As I said the second half of the film is a bit of a let-down. A lot of the energy and tension built up in the first half is lost and I felt the film just petered out rather than building up to a big finish. So, in the end it was a bit disappointing although Dougray Scott is very menacing as the bad guy. I certainly wouldn't want to come across him on a dark night! Over all, a good first half let down buy a very average second… Not recommended.My score: 5.3/10

Two private bankers, Alistair and Jamie, who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a 12 hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society.Their next target is Sean Macdonald a parent-less teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh.She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast.Sean agrees to play for cash. He soon realises he's walked into twelve hours of hell where survival is the name of the game....basically the British version of Hard Target, and to be honest, not very good. It sounded like a clever film, but really, if someone offered you this task, you would just bunk up in a hotel for the night and sleep out the twelve hours?? The poor kid who gets offered the game isn't the brightest spark, he's carrying all this money around with him, doesn't get a taxi or anything, and just runs around the (very)empty streets. I know it sounds like i'm taking the fun out of the film, but the makers have done that themselves by making it not very realistic, and using the two villains, as nothing more the eighties reject yuppies who have nothing better to do.Scott is the only good thing in this, and he's really scraping the barrel now, considering ten years ago he was in summer blockbusters.It's too mundane, not very exciting, and very predictable.