Jackdaw directed by Jamie Childs is a fast-moving action thriller that beautifully exploits the northeast’s brutal post-industrial landscape and breath-taking country.
Birdie
by Alexa DalbyJackdaw
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Jackdaw is a fast-moving action thriller that beautifully exploits the northeast’s brutal post-industrial landscape and breath-taking country.
It is full-throttle, exciting entertainment with some surprising twists.
Director/screenwriter Jamie Childs is noted for his prolific TV work – The Sandman, Willow, Doctor Who, His Dark Materials. Jackdaw, his debut feature, celebrates the highs and lows of his home region in an action-packed chase thriller set in the industrial wasteland of Hartlepool, the bleak North Sea with its necklace of wind turbines, decayed factories, the beautiful shoreline and the Tees Valley countryside. The killing pace – and the body count – never lets up and the cinematography by William Baldy is stunning. There’s much more unrelenting action than there is dialogue.
Childs says “We see so many American films set in atmospheric towns that don’t tie themselves to local, kitchen-sink stories. I thought, why don’t we do this in Britain? We set out to push the envelope of what was possible stylistically and tonally in the region. Its clash of pastoral and industrial worlds is the perfect setting for an exciting, pulpy chase thriller.”
Although Jackdaw encompasses the state of Britain (spoiler – it’s not what it was), feminine and masculine roles, family and multiculturalism, it perhaps doesn’t have the nuances someone like Danny Boyle might have added. It’s short on character development, but who cares, when the action is so gripping.
Jack Dawson (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) aka Jackdaw is a former local motocross champion with a baroque back story, who has just left the army. Broke, he agrees to do an open water pick up of a mysterious illegal package in the bleak North Sea for a dealer to the local rave scene.. But he’s unlucky: a resulting double cross and his Down Syndrome younger brother’s unexplained disappearance set him on a violent nocturnal odyssey.
Other starring roles are played by Jenna Coleman, Thomas Turgoose (a Shane Meadows collaborator) and Rory McCann.
<em?The film premiers on its home turf of Teesside on 24 January and is released on 26 January in the UK.
Video interviews below with charismatic Jamie Childs
