Relentless

Normally I tend to avoid these British indie thrillers like the plague because they're invariably rubbish, but RELENTLESS offers something a bit different. It's better written and directed than something like JACK SOUTHEAST, and it turns out that lead actor Steven Murphy was the guy fulfilling all three roles. Sure, his acting's basic, but supporting actress Tiffany-Ellen Robinson makes up for that with a winning performance as the street prostitute with a heart of gold. The story is about an ex-con going straight, nothing new there, but it's easy to follow, fairly well made for the budget and quite engaging.

I wasn't expecting much, its obvious it's done on a shoe string.

Bit shaky at the start I thought.

But it got better, just with heart and soul of the performances. No explosions every 5 minutes for no reason.

Could have used a bigger budget for production values, but I expect that will come.

Dialogue was realistic, with a great running time, in and out, no wasting of time.

Found it good fun with heartfelt performances.

Especially with a crew list that small, this is tough to do.

Hooray for the indy spirit!

This film could have been so much more. It drags itself from beginning to end and it seems that parts of the dialogue and film are missing.

Fight scenes are pretty naff and the plot is just abysmal as it seems to jump around all over the place with no rhyme or reason to it.

If you want a film that delivers a good scrap then this is not it. Save yourself the time and effort it takes to watch and find something better. At just shy of 80 mins runtime I think its been cut down far too much for any semblance of sense and continuity to shine through.

I gave it 3 stars because that's as about as much as it deserves.

After having greatly enjoyed independent film-maker Steven Murphy's sexually skewed, downbeat small-town melodrama 'My Saviour', I eagerly went into his gritty suburban pot-boiler 'Relentless', secretly hoping for a similarly strange, off-beat excursion into the bellicose Brit-gangster milieu, only to soon discover that, for reasons obscure, Murphy largely eschews the quixotic, auteurist weirdness of 'My Saviour' for a far more formulaic gunz n' dodgy geezerz 'Essex Boys' pastiche. Jake (Steven), an amiable quick-fisted lug is released from nick for crimes obscure, only to find himself inexorably embroiled in some increasingly volatile small-town chav warfare that will do little to endear him to his parole officer!.

After the muscular thug with the big heart comes to the aid of Ava (Tiffany Ellen-Robinson), a chippy, red-headed brass with the proverbial gilded heart, these dramatically mismatched hearts form an uneasy, frequently febrile alliance as they frantically attempt to elude the ever encroaching menace of knife-wielding, Hyena-like Hoodies, reckless roid-headed hoodlums, gun-happy gangsters and some mountainous mush-mouthed mongle called 'The Beast'! Even with 'Relentless' concluding explosively in a seemingly arbitrary squib-happy gunfight I found myself a little underwhelmed by it all. The acting performances are pretty variable, with stolid, if unexciting work from Murphy, and the plainly engaged Ellen-Robinson is convincing as the pitifully insecure, hard-luck, happy-go-mucky harlot, but, unfortunately, it is all a trifle predictable, Murphy's generic dialogue is functional, rather than exceptional, the too-hectic fight scenes appeared rushed, but happily the noisome, thick-eared narrative is deliciously enlivened by actor/composer Maria Theresa Rodriguez's fine score. In conclusion, while I enjoyed the more incongruent episodes of 'Reckless' it lacked the inherent WTF quality of 'My Saviour'. To end on a more positive note, I genuinely dug the Father Ted joke!

Likeable characters who speak with such a strong English accent they should have included subtitles.

The story goes nowhere. You keep waiting for action but it's few and far between.

There is no resolution. It just ends.

4/10.