All things considering, this really isn't a bad movie, which is all mostly due to its pretty solid story.

At first sight this movie perhaps may come across as a very formulaic and predictable one. One that keeps 'borrowing' heavily from other and much better known successful genre movies. And well, in some ways that's still the case but at the same time the movie as a whole manages to feel like a solid and original enough one on its own.

I simply have to admit that I liked the core story of the movie. In its core, this is a classic and generic detective/crime movie, about the hunt of a serial killer. It's a whodunit as well, in which basically every supporting character is a suspect. I admit, it were a bit too many though. It's one of those movies in which it really doesn't matter too much who eventually is going to turn out to be the killer. It besides was somewhat annoying how the movie constantly kept introducing new characters, that could be put on the 'suspects list' as well. Nevertheless, I liked the killer and all of his/her creative killings. The movie uses a pretty original approach to its concept, making this a pleasant one to watch, though at the same time it isn't ever becoming a truly surprising or very engaging movie with anything.

Despite all of its solid thriller themes and elements, the movie never manages to work out as a tense one as well. Perhaps it's all due to it that the movie was trying to be a totally serious and very authentic movie, while it didn't really had the budget for things to ever fully work out. You can say it was thinking too highly of itself or perhaps it was aiming for something that just was out of its reach. There is just something off sometimes about an obvious low budget movie that's trying to be all serious with its subject manner.

The movie really isn't that long but it still manages to feel needlessly long. It's all because the movie features some stretched out scenes in it, often accompanied by some poor and pointless dialog. Perhaps also another reason why the movie feels overlong is because you can basically divide it into two separate parts. The first part of the movie is set in London and the second one in New York. Was this really needed? Does it add anything to the story that about half way through it changes settings In my opinion not and it also does feel like a bit of a weird move actually. Everything that happens in New York in this movie easily could have been placed in London as well.

But really, for such a low budget movie, with so many unknown people involved, this movie still is quite the accomplishment! I just have to give it lots of credits for having a solid main story in it, that's solid enough for me to call this movie a perfectly watchable one.

6/10

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Man, what is it with all those recent British crime movies, that try to be all hip and yet realistic at the same time? It isn't really working.

Guess that somewhere hidden deep down, there is still a decent enough movie in this but the problem is that the story gets very poorly handled, making this a bit of a mess and a needlessly confusing movie to watch.

To be frank, I don't even really know what the story was supposed to be all about in the first place. It's apparently based on true events and the movie also seems to assume that everybody who watches it already knows what the story is supposed to be a all about. Well, not me though, since I have absolutely never heard of the Essex boys before and after watching this movie, I still don't really know anything about them.

The movie is really hard to follow and feels all over the place with its storytelling. It doesn't really helps that it doesn't really seem to know who it wants to focus on the most; the criminals or the police team that's trying to take them down. There is never really a good enough balance and it more often feels like you are watching two completely different, unrelated movies. It seems more interest in the criminals but when your movie focuses on a bunch of criminals, you at least need to make them somewhat likable and interesting enough to follow around. Neither is the case with this movie really and it's confusing to see what the movie was actually trying to achieve and ask of its viewers. Are we supposed to cheer or feel for any of the characters, or is it just an objective observation of events that happened in the past? Well, if that would had been the case, the movie should had been a far more realistic and gritty one, to at least get you involved with its story but the movie really doesn't seem to know how to pull that off.

Something that kind of cracked me up was the narration for this movie. The narrator sounds like he's watching and commenting on a very tense and exciting boxing match, which feels totally out of place of course. Seriously, what were they thinking?

Can't really claim this is one of the worst genre movies I have ever seen, it still has some things going for it but the storytelling still makes this movie nearly impossible to watch.

4/10

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