Star rating: ***
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do in Greg Loftin's audacious and largely successful bid to set a western on a London council estate. The Saxon housing scheme, slap bang in the middle of a flightpath, is a place where the community lives in fear of their homes being demolished and of the local hardmen who call themselves, tongue-in-cheek, The Bailiffs. It's a nice touch of black humour in a film that's coated in the stuff.
In fine western tradition, Saxon centres around an enigmatic loner striding into town. When we first meet Fast Eddie (Sean Harris) he's having an eye gouged out for not repaying a debt fast enough. Told the other will follow if he doesn't cough up soon, he returns to his old stomping ground of Saxon looking for Kevin, an old mate who is in the money after winning a television quiz show. Eddie, judging by the way the locals look sideways at him, is a man with a past in these parts.
Kevin turns out to be missing and his desperate wife hires Eddie to track him down. So begins Eddie's descent into some long dark nights of the soul. Before this week is over, he will look back on the time his eye was gouged out and regard it as as not a bad evening, all things considered.
Just as Clint Eastwood was the Man with No Name, Harris tends to be the Actor with No Name. The face is familiar, and when you see it appear in a film or television drama it's a guarantee of a notable performance to come. Yet so completely does he tend to disappear into a character - Joy Division's Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People, a psycho security guard in the otherwise dire Outlaw - it's hard to remember him in his own right from one outing to the next. Having long been confined to relatively minor roles, Saxon is his chance to make an impression and he falls on it like a starving man spying a plate of pork chops. With Fast Eddie he takes an apparently simple, fairly unlikeable loser and turns him into someone to care about.
Saxon is Loftin's first feature, and at times it shows. He can't resist demonstrating what's in his box of tricks - slo-mo, fast forwarding the action, setting up whimsical scenes - even when this doesn't add much to proceedings. He struggles to keep the pace going after a sprinting start, but makes up for it with a nicely executed ending. All in, an impressive debut that reflects the years of effort Loftin spent honing his script before going into production.
Tonight and Friday, 9.45pm, Filmhouse.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article