Calibre (2018)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Brilliant and touching

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

As I was watching Calibre, I found myself growing both impressed with the setup and desperate in my hope that it would not stumble into the same pitfall that most thrillers do, which is the eye-rolling plot convenience of characters making dumb decisions. Thankfully, as you can probably tell by rating, this movie pleasantly surprised me! The characters act realistically, and every single nail-biting moment feels earned within the context of the story. Writer/director Matt Palmer deserves high amounts of praise for his attention to detail and tight storytelling. The thematic content in this movie is pretty heavy, but it doesn't feel excessive or exploitative in any way. In simpler terms, this movie takes an incredibly solid story setup and never once fumbles with the follow-through. My only gripe keeping it from a perfect score is that I didn't necessarily feel anything special in regards to the cinematography or the score (although I will note that the lack of music in certain scenes was an inspired choice). Overall, it's a tense movie with sobering content that will most likely leave you questioning what you might have done differently in such a scenario but wholly satisfied with what you saw.

There is not much wrong with this film and it deserves a better score than what it is resting on just now.Two lads decide to go for a hunting trip in the north of Scotland before one of them becomes a father. When hunting a deer it all goes horribly wrong resulting in a confrontation with their emotions, morals and a close community who slowly become more suspicious of them.All performances are very convincing and the plot is simple yet believable. It's a great Scottish thriller that will have your hands arching over your mouth in shock.

The choices we make will ultimately define consequences we must face in the future. Or so, we've been told since a young age. Writer-director Matt Palmer gives that axiom a wicked spin in Calibre, a Netflix release not to be underestimated by its lean length and production budget. Before the film reaches its inevitable and horrifying conclusion, Calibre will have the audience questioning what is right and wrong. Viewers may even find themselves rooting for either the timid and polite Vaughn (Jack Lowden) or the confident and outgoing (Marcus Martin McCann), old friends off to the Sottish highlands for a bit of deer hunting. This would also be their last getaway as bachelors before Vaughn marries his newly pregnant fiancé. Upon arrival at the local tavern, the duo find the locals less than hospitable. At first it's not clear whether the locals don't take kindly to outsiders or they just don't like big city executives flirting with the local women. A night of pub-hopping later, the next morning starts with a hangover and ends with a nightmare that doesn't end.Thus begins Palmer's feature debut until it takes you to its mind-numbing and gripping final thirty minutes. If you survive this, the very last scene will leave you with an icy shiver. Very bad things happen in this film, some of which in quick succession and before we get a chance to digest the gravity of the horror unfolding on screen. While it's not about whether viewers can stomach some of the violence, the question that emerges is in identifying who the real villains are. Getting into more detail would be doing this shocking and edgy thriller a disservice but the two male leads are excellent, each in their own way. Lowden, fresh of the success of Christopher Nolan's war epic Dunkirk, and McCann building on his terrific performance in the 2016 post-apocalyptic thriller The Survivalist, are both exceptional in a simple story of a stag-weekend gone terribly wrong. Even so, they are both matched by strong talent from the likes of Tony Curran and Ian Pirie, playing village locals who are essentially law of the land. Calibre is evidently shot on a low budget but still manages to keep the viewer arrested with a sinking feeling that the worst is yet to come. While the premise of a stag night gone bad, or outsiders having to outsmart suspicious locals have been done many times before, Palmer's story is somehow counter-intuitive to what one would expect. In between balancing our sympathies for the two leads against a situation that gets gruesome by the minute, Palmer deserves the most praise for taking a familiar story and giving it a diabolical yet intentional twist. Neatly embedded in the story are also subtle questions about the disparity of power, wealth, and justice, while offering nothing but a bleak answer as to how and why bad things happen to good people. It isn't a joyous film to recommend and neither is there anything pleasant about the film but if so much can be delivered with so little, then Matt Palmer is the name to look for as the new and upcoming master of the macabre.

Good movie. Bloody story. Good thriller movies ever watched. Fantastic. No any words to say.