The Girl from the Naked Eye   Starring: Gary Stretch, Sasha Grey, Jason Yee, Dominique Swain, Ron Yuan and Samantha Streets G2 Pictures RRP: £15.99 G2P058 Certificate: 15 Available 06 February 2012

Ah, poor Jake (Jason Yee). Down on his luck, he takes a job driving escorts to their clients, a role which requires him to be dispassionate. But when he falls in love with Sandy (Samantha Streets), she winds up dead. Jake goes a little nuts and combs the city, interrogating everyone he can find, to uncover Sandy’s killer. Retribution can be a bitch...

The Girl from the Naked Eye (2012 - 1 hr, 20 min, 17 sec) is a tongue in cheek thriller, directed by David Ren from a Larry Madill, David Ren and Jason Yee script. The film is an independently made, straight to video, production but don’t let that put you off. I’ve seen worse films in my local multiplex which had ten times the budget.

Part Taxi Driver, part film noir, with Jake standing in for the detective, including a dubiously cheesy voiceover narration which hasn’t really worked since Humphrey Bogart, but film makers still, occasionally try it out. The film contains some good, intentional, adult humour; the best mini scene is when Jake interrupts his boss having sex with a rather noisily vocal young lady, which he, personally, finds incredibly distracting.

Given its budget, the film does well to look as good as it does, with a convincing cityscape opening, which also declares the film's tropes, with a detective comic book, so we are in the land of noir stereotypes. That is not to say that the actors try to do what they can with the film's weakest point; its script. There is an inconsistency in quality and an over reliance on the "F" word to denote masculinity. Likewise, the acting can be a variable experience, though it still has enough going for it to be worth a punt.

The film scores high on editing, directing and squeezing every buck out of its budget to end up with a movie which looks better than its cost would suggest. Although he gets into a ludicrous amount of fights, winning them against all odds, the martial arts choreography is up amongst the best.

Once again the film was provided as a screener, so no menus, no extras and a slightly fuzzy picture.

If your tastes run to films with copious amounts of breasts on display and a script that doesn’t take itself too seriously then this might be worth checking out.

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Charles Packer