Ray Perso is a hacker with a mission; unfortunately when he hacks into his city's computers, getting the bank machines to spew out all their money, the authorities take a very dim view of his activities. Sprung from jail he is taken to Moscow to help a family friend to relieve Russian banks of their money. All goes well until Ray meets a prostitute who he falls for...

Moscow Chill (2007 - 1 hr, 30 min, 20 sec) is an action thriller directed by first timer Chris Solimine, who co-wrote the screenplay with Andrei Konchalovsky. The review disc contained the original theatrical trailer (1 min, 56 sec) as its only extra. The film is in English and Russian, though there were no subtitles for the Russian sequences on the review disc. These may or may not appear on the finished disc.

It’s another cracking independent film, which does more with its budget than you would have thought possible. The script is good and the cinematography is something which you would normally see on a much more expensive endeavour.

With a film like this it stand or falls on the central performance, and Norman Reedus imbues his chain smoking hacker with real heart - even if all his scenes with the bald and violent Dolphin are stolen by Slava Schoot. The rest of the cast all put in good turns, but then this is easy with such an engaging script.

So what more could you want from a film, good writing, good acting and a style of filmmaking which puts the film up with a major studio release. If Solimine can produce quality on such a tight budget we can only look forward, with anticipation, to his next film.

7

Charles Packer