Julian Wadham – Podcasting Them Softly

The rate that teams of mercenaries seem to run into ghosts, creatures and demons seems to be awfully high in cinema but I guess their jobs take them to some pretty dark corners of the world where anything could be lurking. In Steve Barker’s Outpost the dark corner is an abandoned WWII bunker in Eastern Europe, the team is a hard scrabble bunch led by Ray Stevensen and Richard Brake and the gathering menace is… well you’ll see.

This one is cool because these guys are essentially trapped between one bad scenario and a severely worse one. As bloody war rages above them on the surface, they descend deeper into this long forgotten bunker for refuge and discover that naturally they aren’t the only ones down there. For the most part it chooses atmosphere over gore as the menacing forces gradually encroach on them surrounded by ghostly mist and they realize that this is one right corner they can’t just shoot their way out of. Stevensen has a great stalwart screen presence and heads up this dirty dozen style posse nicely, while Brake also provides his usual sly charisma. There’s a sequel out there by the same director no less but I haven’t seen it so I can’t recommend yet. This however is a chilly good time, a serviceable action horror that doesn’t go too far overboard or become obnoxiously silly but reins it in just enough.

-Nate Hill

Legacy: Black Ops is a good one. Like so many indie products, it has been marketed to look like an action flick for dvd, but the truth is something more akin to a psycho – political thriller. Clearly influenced by both the Bourne films and Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate, it reins the intrigue in somewhat for an intimate, starkly paced look at one man who is on the brink of losing both his mind and memories in the wake of a special ops mission gone awry. Idris Elba gives a mini powerhouse as Malcolm Grey, a battle scarred veteran who has isolated himself in a drab motel room, ruminating on a calamitous outing with his fellow squad members to find and take out eastern European extremist Salenko (Julian Wadham). Whatever went wrong sent a chain reaction down the ranks and left them divided in years to come, but we are only treated to unreliable fragments of these events, reflected through the prism of Malcom’s broken mind. He receives visits from his squad mates, but are they really there, or yet another illusion dreamt up to avert his gaze from the truth? Character actor Richard Brake is O’Keefe, his longtime friend and second in command, providing sympathy and solid support during the mission we see unfold in hectic flashbacks. Adjacent to this plot is the political rise of Malcom’s brother Darnell (Eamonn Walker) riding the wave of an election that will put him in a seat of immense power, but one wonders how he’s connected to Malcolm and his past? How indeed. It’s confusing to say the least, but never trips over its own ambitions, sewing threads of concise cause and effect throughout it’s story, which is emotionally downbeat and melancholic in nature, a stylistic choice that really works in the film’s favour. If you’re willing to sit, absorb and meditate on a slow burner of a tale that feeds you pieces of the puzzle bit by bit, with almost zero action to be found, have at ‘er. I enjoyed it immensely.