The first feature film from Julian Gilby, ‘Reckoning Day’ has been described by some as a ’16mm student film that’s been stretched.’ and having sat and watched it tonight, im kind of inclined to agree…in every sense of the interpretation…

Clocking in at WELL over 100 minutes long, which it ABSOLUTELY didnt need to be, the plot for this thing is fairly straightforward. But that doesnt stop the film makers from overconvoluting this thing to the point that you can quite easily lose track as to what is even supposed to be going on at any given moment.

The film opens with a prologue set almost a year and a half before the events of the film proper. In crawling text it’s established that a top UK assassin by the name of ‘Charles’ grew bored of the work offered in the UK and was eventually courted by US ‘Investors’ to take on more varied and interesting hitman work. Eventually, the portfolio became so diverse and complex, that he needed a team to help keep on top of balancing the books. bringing in several old colleagues to help him keep on top of things.

Eventually however, the rival gangs and hitman service offerers became frustrated that Charles and the team were cleaning up quite nicely and taking all the work off them, so; they turned them in to the US secret service. Who began to try and hunt down the gang, closing off all forms of exit from the states and eventually forcing the gang to flee into the Rocky mountains, in the hopes of reaching Canada.

However, due to cross collaboration, and work with an equally impressive hitman named ‘Ed’ the Canadian secret service were onto the gang too and after a few days in the mountains, both secret services found the gang and a bloody gunfight ensued in which the body count hit both sides.

Flash forward 17 months, and in England one of the few remaining Gang members by the name ‘Stuart’ is slowly picking off old members of the gang with his apprentice ‘Ross’ and the pair appear to be looking for something. Meanwhile ‘Ed’ who has now fully recovered from his battle with Charles and co, recieves a phonecall from a secret service representative called ‘Brian’ who informs him that Stuart is going around killed all the old gang members, and is seemingly looking for something.

Brian informs Ed that it appears like Charles and Stuart were working together on synthesizing a new drug from a HIGHLY toxic plant they were dubbing ‘Unseen Force’ when injected at the correct dose, the user suddenly gains an extremely heightened sense of awareness, their reflexes enhance 300%. they become resistant to most forms of pain. they can survive SIGNIFICANT injury and continue as if nothing happend. Basically, it turns them into a semi invincible killing machine. with the only way to kill them being destroying the head, completley dismembering the body, or an overdose of ‘unseen force’ which, while a LOT less toxic when correctly synthisized…is still VERY toxic if taken consistently or in large doses.

So; Ed, Brian and assistant James head out to try and protect the last member of the gang still standing, while Stuart, Ross and the rest of the gang head out to take him out on behalf of a shady benefactor. with guns, guts and gore galore for the rest of the runtime.

And…theres no real way to sugar coat this, in my opinion, the films a mess. At times, it feels like someone figuring out how to put a movie together…But for the most part, it just feels like some friends messing about with a camera trying to recreate some of their favourite movie scenes with their own personal touches to it. With mixed results.

The script is INCREDIBLY bloated, WELL beyond the point of reason. this should have been 80-90 minutes with 8 minutes of titles and credits and not a MINUTE longer. at 103 minutes, its a slog. its repetative, incoherent, the act structuring is border rigormortis induced. the plotting jumps all over the place, with no real sense of timing, location or spacing that these events happen in. It feels like everything happens in just a single day, despite the fact that cant possibly be the case.

The characters all feel half borrowed from mainstream films, and half built on the personalities of the people playing the characters, the dialogue makes ‘Garth Marenghis darkplace’ look like ‘Hamlet’. the ending is dissatisfying, the pacings atrocious. and It quite quickly becomes confusing because most of the extras in the film wear baliclavas making it almost impossible to guess really whether they’re masked men we’re rooting for, or ones we’re hoping dont shoot our key characters…

Where the script works for me, feels largely accidental, line readings that made me shoot water out of my mouth and all over my TV, fight scenes that left my jaw on the floor (and not because they were ‘good’) the moments that this film bomb…pretty much on all fronts, is some of the most hilarious and bizarre moments i’ve seen in a long time.

The directions inconsistent, as mentioned this feels less like a film maker expressing their ‘voice’ through the camera, and more like a bunch of film students trying to do what their favourite directors do, but with no idea WHY the directors chose to shoot things the way they did. it feels mindless in places, While making notes for this movie, I repeatedly had to wind back. Not because the film got too busy, but because MY brain went on autopilot just watching random camera swings, crash zooms and strange swaps between camera format…because for some reason, this film was shot on both 16mm film and mini DV tape…I have no idea why…but there you go.

Cast direction is hilariously awful. you’ve got a group of gents who I could best describe as ‘the scariest geek bar pub quiz team you’ve ever seen’ they dont animate particualarly well, they mumble 80% of the lines in this thing, even the choreographed fight scenes have to be kept tight and frenzied to mask the fact that these guys just couldnt quite figure out what steps to do things in, and how to frame it to make it feel weighty and impactful.

Cine is ‘passable’ most of the shots are framed about right, they use B-roll and some early CG effects to try and give the ‘look’ of the film a bit of a boost, but I was unimpressed by the attempts at moody lighting, and while they do bother to experiment a bit, they dont really try to intigrate any of that ‘experimentation’ into THEIR film. they literally just right scenes where its like ‘You’ve just been spiked with acid’ *cue 5 minute trippy ‘shot on DV’ art house sequence that is in NO way connected to the actual movie. Its hit and miss for the most part, but not my cup of tea at all persoanlly.

Same goes for the edit, it feels like it was assembled in a woodchipper. the gunfight sequences are basically seizure enducing, with little rhyme or reason. scenes run for random runtimes that are equally bloated and feel inconsistent. This isnt an edit where the scenes feel like the editor knew where to naturally end them. It feels like an edit where the editor put everything down on a timeline, chopped off the ‘action’ and ‘cut’ moments, and when things felt a bit uneven, he’d just toss in random B-roll from other scenes to try and create a sense of dramatic faux emotional tension…or he’d do a crazy freakout art piece…again, it wasnt really for me.

Performance wise, everyone is hobbled by horendous ADR. the less said about the ENTIRE cast the better. But I will specifically single out Dominic Alan-Smith as ‘Stuart’ who may well be my favourite Assassin in the entirity of UK cinema. a quiet, dry, sarcastic performance that absolutely isnt ‘good’ in my opinion…but is ABSOLUTELY memorable in the best possible ways.

Throw in an ‘alright’ score thats maybe a tad generic but ultimately passable. and you have ‘Reckoning Day’. A film that I personally couldnt wait to get to the end of. Its a film that feels like a slog to get through, but it rewards your perseverence with some of the most brilliantly unintentional moments of humour i’ve ever seen. weird line deliveries, strange physical movements, odd edits, bizarre camera choices are peppered throughout the entire runtime. and acted almost like a mouthful of water in the desert every 10-15 minutes or so. THAT is what kept me watching, and THAT is probably the strongest thing that’ll make me revisit this in future.

With a group of friends and a case of beer? this could be an AMAZING night for the lads and lasses. But flying sobre and solo? you’d have more fun watching traffic.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/reckoning-day/