31 North 62 East (Region 1 Edition)   Starring: John Rhys-Davies and Marina Sirtis MTI Home Video RRP: $24.95 039414581935 Certificate: R Available 15 November 2010

When the British Prime Minister discovers that the nephew of an influential ally has been killed by British forces, he gives up a different unit to protect an eighty million armaments contract, secure in the knowledge that with all the soldier dead his secret will never be revealed, however, one does and she wants answers and revenge…

31 North 62 East (2009) is a British psychological thriller written by Leofwine Loraine and Tristan Loraine and directed by Tristan.

Whilst it should be laudable that independent British film are still being made it raises instant suspicion that the film had to find an independent American company to bring it to the public. With a three million price tag and a couple of well-known actors in the form of John Rhys-Davies and Marina Sirtis and a fairly straight forward narrative the film should have had a chance at being fairly reasonable, so it’s odd the film's sum of its parts does not gel into a credible product.

The main problem becomes evident in the first ten minutes when a sense of unease falls upon the audience and not for any good reason. The film opens with the central premise of the Prime Minister selling out one of his own units for the sake of political and monetary gain. Now I’ve seen John Rhys-Davies in many a film and he has a distinctive voice, but here something very strange was happening, I couldn’t make up my mind if he was attempting the world’s worst Gordon Brown impression, or was just having an off day. This isn’t confined to him alone as the majority of the actors appear to be off their game, but only by a little, however the cumulative effect of all of them turns a pedestrian film into a poor one.

Much of this can be laid at the feet of the director. Whilst it is a bold move to create a form of Vietnam genre movie, where the action is told from the perspective of the honourable troop, who are being sold out by the less than honourable politicians, the film lack the clarity need. Time isn’t taken to develop the characters, so the audience finds it difficult to care about their fates; this is not helped by some of the convolutions of the plot. One of its biggest sins is to allow the portrayal of the Afghans as almost pantomime villains, which will only reinforce poor racial stereotypes.

Given that I was supplied with a review copy it is difficult to comment on the final audio or visual quality. Overall it’s not a real stinker, but many of the faults could have been addressed, I suspect, if the brothers hadn’t been responsible for writing directing and producing the film, so many times this doesn’t work out as a film often needs a different perspective, I suspect that they were too close to their own project to see its final shortcomings.

5

Charles Packer