Freight

Freight delivers a reasonable story, decent acting and a fair message. While it's not top budget, it's well paced with sufficient action to keep you going. The story has appeal without being overly sentimental. If you appreciate indie film, moderate transgression, and a few punch-ups - this little flick delivers.

The bad guys are also well done. Danny Midwinter - as the lead nasty, does an excellent job of being nefarious. His sneer and wonderfully grotesque laugh captures the sinister Eastern European Mafia persona quite nicely.

It won't hurt you to give this a try.

I caught this in Cannes and was thoroughly impressed as the UK has been crying out for a good, character-based action film for ages. The set-pieces in the film (some brutal cage fights and other action scenes) are really well structured, but more importantly they all have a sense of character. You really care about the characters involved and their motivations dictate the actions they take. Also the action is refreshingly realistic and crisply shot and edited, unlike a lot of other films these days.

I won't mention any spoilers but the performances here are very good, especially Billy Murray as Gabe, and Danny Midwinter who gives a genuinely terrifying performance as the main villain Christi. Craig Fairbrass lends solid support but his character is the only one that feels slightly under-written, unless perhaps some of his character's scenes were deleted? Christi's main henchman (Andrew Tiernan I think) and the main cage fighter character were both splendid as well.

The ending of the film is a bit ambiguous but this only adds to the reality of the situation portrayed.

I would recommend Freight to fans of action drama, and for fans of cracking, old-school British cinema. You won't be disappointed.

As a fan of British gangster movies I was looking forward to watching this, but this movie is so bad - one of the worst I've ever seen. The similarities to Taken in terms of plot are obvious, but that's all this has in common with that much superior effort. The direction in Freight is hit and miss and the script is terrible, it often resembles a home movie with added fireworks. Sadly some of the acting is even worse than the script. Did the director not bother with auditions? There are so many bad performances in the movie but the actors playing the twins are so bad they'll actually make you laugh, two passers-by could have been dragged in off the street who would look more comfortable in front of a camera. The best advice I can give to the actor playing Stevie is to give up and get a proper job, because he is not an actor. His brother playing Sonny may be even worse and more wooden, removing the energy out of every scene he's in with a strange anti-charisma and expressionless face. Hardly surprising to note via IMDb that other than a bit part on Channel 4 he has hardly worked since he left run of the mill daytime soap Doctors. You wonder how some actors manage to pay the rent.

Trying to look at the positives I suppose the film has it's heart in the right place, human trafficking is an evil that ruins many lives, but you have to wonder about the good that charities concerned with helping the victims of human trafficking could have done with the £2.5 million budget which Freight supposedly cost (what WAS that budget spent on, it looks like it cost a tenth of that amount). A couple of other positives, and the reason this gets two stars from me rather than one, are the performances of Billy Murray and Laura Aikman. Both actors should be free of any criticism aimed at Freight. Murray phones it in here, appears to be going through the motions and thinking about the pay cheque (just like those ambulance chasing commercials he appears in) but he is as competent as ever. Laura Aikman does well also as kidnap victim Julie. She clearly has talent, it's just a shame she ends up in duffers like this. Taking a look at the directors IMDb profile it appears he's a relative of hers (Uncle? Father?) so you can understand why she took the role on. Sadly though appearing in movies like this may only harm her future employability. St Paul may have a future as a director, but probably not as a writer, and hopefully he will do better in the future with a script created by others.

Freight probably rates high on the list of worst movies I've ever viewed. Are the reviewers who gave this movie the thumbs up high on LSD? Okay, so the concept is great and has potential however the poor acting, poorer casting, complete lack of depth to main characters, bad cinematography and gaping holes throughout the narrative ruin any chance of obtaining ANY potential the concept has. My wife has now banned me from deciding our next films to view choices (I'm ashamed to admit it was my idea to watch Freight, I can't even lay blame on another!). How on earth the producers managed to gain finance for this film is completely beyond me. WARNING! LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WASTE TIME WATCHING BAD MOVIES ;)

This film is a mish mash of scenarios, poorly executed. The film jumps from one scene to another in a random fashion. The whole thing looks like it was hastily put together at the last minuet. It is altogether an embarrassing advertisement for the British film industry. The characters especially the Russians/Romainians are scarcely believable.