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gdarcyteacher
Reviews
Ten Dead Men (2008)
Why isn't this out yet?
I was privileged enough to get a ticket to see the Premiere of this film in Brighton, No small feat as I live in Wales and made the journey especially, but it's not every day that a British action Movie with no budget looks so very exciting. I stumbled upon the production rumours a few years ago, a friend mentioned that the makers of a comic I had started reading were making a film. The comic was called night warrior and had produced some excellent issues, so when I heard that they were realising a script written by a regular contributer to that comic, my interest piqued. I travelled to Brighton, watched the film and even met Doug Bradley, but that has little reflection on y opinion. I love Doug Bradley regardless of what he's in, I think he's great from Salome through to Killer Tongue it really doesn't matter. Ten dead Men however, made me stop a while and think: do I like this 'cos Bradley's in it, or is there something else?
There is something else.
This is why I like Ten dead Men: it's a British B-movie, it has excellent stunt work (really mad skills - they actually wail on each other all the time), a surprisingly good cast of unknowns (and Doug Bradley, who is frankly brilliant), absolutely no budget, but millions worth in production values. It was clearly filmed in bits over a long period of time before a script tied it together, but thank god for that script. Or rather: Chris Regan, thank him for writing it. And thank Hobden, the Producer, for picking him up and Ross Boysak for his direction of the material he was furnished with. Boysak's direction is slick, the production excellent, I really don't have a bad thing to say about the ciné but without the script it would just be ninety minutes of fights and dull as hell. There was a trembling feeling in my gut when I watched it that they were a titanium acid-edge away from making a film that's ninety minutes of fight scene. The script lifts it up: it's narrative based, an incredibly risky and unusual thing to do and one which you think may fall flat on its behind after twenty minutes, but this is the genius: it doesn't, it persists, it flows through every scene, and rather than alienate it's audience as, theoretically, too much narrative in a drama does, the narration becomes your guide, it's a running commentary for a revenge tragedy; it gives blind rage a poetry it may not have had otherwise. It makes the film's violence accessible, justified, sanctified and right. We support the main character wholeheartedly, just I support the predator when David Attenborough tells me to, I feel and empathise with an animal that I would not have otherwise. Regan anthropomorphises fury and allows an omnipotent Doug Bradley to tell us about it. It's brilliant, and worth watching, re-watching and then buying the DVD. (If it ever comes out.)