KLOKKENLUIDER |
★★★½☆
2 February 2023
A movie review of KLOKKENLUIDER.
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Director: Neil Maskell.
Starring: Amit Shah, Sura Dohnke, Tom Burke, Roger Evans, Gracy Goldman, Jenna Coleman.
“We’re not supposed to attract any attention,” Ewan (Amit Shah)
I believe klokkenluider is pronounced clock-en-loud-er. I didn’t notice the word klokkenluider mentioned in the film. I believe it is a Dutch expression for whistle-blower. I didn’t find these two things out until after watching. A Dutch term for a flick set in Belgium. I thought random, until I started writing this review and found out that Dutch is one of the country’s official languages. Every day is a school day. The unusual title (welcome of course in the ocean of generic movie monikers) has the audience off-kilter, not knowing what it refers to (if they have gone in cold), setting the tone for what is about to unfold.
Starring: Amit Shah, Sura Dohnke, Tom Burke, Roger Evans, Gracy Goldman, Jenna Coleman.
“We’re not supposed to attract any attention,” Ewan (Amit Shah)
I believe klokkenluider is pronounced clock-en-loud-er. I didn’t notice the word klokkenluider mentioned in the film. I believe it is a Dutch expression for whistle-blower. I didn’t find these two things out until after watching. A Dutch term for a flick set in Belgium. I thought random, until I started writing this review and found out that Dutch is one of the country’s official languages. Every day is a school day. The unusual title (welcome of course in the ocean of generic movie monikers) has the audience off-kilter, not knowing what it refers to (if they have gone in cold), setting the tone for what is about to unfold.
A married couple are sequestered in a picturesque house in an isolated European location. Ewan and Silke (Sura Dohnke) are nervous, the former on another level reaching paranoia and deep agitation. They have information, tantalisingly dangled in front of the audience. They await a journalist to unburden themselves. In more bombastic hands this might have been a John Grisham-esque conspiracy thriller. The seclusion is fanning the flames of their dread. Hired by the newspaper with the scoop, two bodyguards come to protect them. One is pretentious, the other a liability.
Added to the close-knit mix, Flo (Jenna Coleman) arrives. Her character calls to mind Ben Kingsley in SEXY BEAST [2000] and Ralph Fiennes in IN BRUGES [2008], potty-mouthed and intimidating. Of all the parts I can imagine actor turned writer-director Neil Maskell playing, it is hers.
KLOKKENLUIDER encapsulates how Neil Maskell fans might imagine him to be, if you thought his personality is like the psychopaths he plays so well in film and television (e.g., KILL LIST [2011], BULL [2021], BAGHDAD CENTRAL [2020], UTOPIA [2013-2014]). Actors make the leap to directing, but it is rare for them to also write their debut features. Hats off to Maskell for doing so. The lines of dialogue are tart. The conversations have humour and an acidic edge. KLOKKENLUIDER feels like the product of a seasoned screenwriter. (I hope this is not one and done for Maskell.)
Camerawork is a little too point-and-shoot for my tastes. There are a couple of neat overhead drone shots and a few slow-mo moments, which feel random – though if you tried hard enough, academic symbolism could be applied to the sequences. Plus, some ear-splitting sound design is thrown in. The stylistic flourishes appear to be aimed at keeping the audience off balance. KLOKKENLUIDER feels like an entertaining play. Cinema arguably has more presentation tools than the theatre, a shame that they were not utilised here.
KLOKKENLUIDER has no obvious catharsis. In the mercilessness and grimness of UK politics under the Tories, perhaps the cynicism acknowledged is the catharsis?