234. Welcome To Curiosity; movie review

WELCOME TO CURIOSITY
Cert 15
95 mins
BBFC advice: Contains strong threat, violence, bloody images, language, sex, nudity

British crime capers don't have a very good reputation with me thanks to the Billy Murray/Craig Fairbrass school of East-End gangster films.
Therefore, I had the usual trepidation which accompanies such movies before watching Ben Pickering's Welcome To Curiosity.
Pickering's movie has a different dimension because he began making it before being jailed for being real-life criminal.
The former Conservative Party candidate was sent down in 2014 for directing a £5million mortgage scam.
Indeed, his own real life story is arguably more interesting than that of the film which he has completed since being released from prison.
Anyway, since being back in circulation, Pickering has been busy on finally distributing the movie to the public.
And, despite its low budget, I have to say it is not nearly as bad as I feared it might be.
Indeed, there are some twists which were clever enough to have blindsided me.
The movie is set in a town called Curiosity and has several strands which cross over to greater or lesser extents, including one about an escaped psychopath, another about a heist and a further one surrounding a salesman disaffection for his boss.
Amrita Acharia plays a female hitch-hiker who has a scary encounter with a lorry driver while the only other relatively well-known name is that of Richard Blackwood who portrays a no-holds-barred gangster.
The stories hang together well and the threads are neatly tied together during a finale which has enough surprises to satisfy.
However, its attempts at black humour only prompted a couple of weak chuckles.
Of course, being a low budget film it is inevitable that there are misfirings - notably around jolting speed of scene changes and an occasionally clunky dialogue.
But, overall, it is engaging and has a decent pace.

Reasons to watch: Engaging crime caper with a decent pace
Reasons to avoid: Not nearly as funny as it wants to be

Laughs: Only a couple of chuckles
Jumps: None
Vomit: Yes
Nudity: Yes
Overall rating: 6.5/10

Director quote - Ben Pickering: "The film was originally written to be set in the rural United States but, for various reasons, filming there was impractical for us. One of the challenges of bringing it to this side of the Atlantic was preserving its quirkiness."

The big question - Would it have worked better in the US?

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