British crime thrillers…every so often a classic rolls around, but you’ve got to wade through a whole heap of sub-par dreck before you find one. The first trailer has hit for Simon Aboud’s (romantically tinged) crime thriller “Comes A Bright Day,” and while nothing on show immediately suggests that it’s going to stray into the classic territory, it certainly looks a cut above the usual cockney geezers, gangsters and guns nonsense. And indeed, our reviewer in Berlin enjoyed it, with reservations, as you can read here. Led by 21 year-old “Submarine” star Craig Roberts – although we maintain he doesn’t look a day older than 16 – the cast also includes Imogen Poots (“Fright Night”), Kevin McKidd (“Trainspotting”) and Timothy Spall.
The official synopsis is way too long for its own good, so instead we’ll give you a quick run-through of the plot that you can see in the trailer. Roberts’ Sam Smith is a hotel bellboy who meets Poots’ jewellery shop assistant and follows her back to her store with the intention of asking her out on a date. Unfortunately the shop is then targeted in an armed robbery, and they are both held hostage alongside the shop’s owner (Spall) while the thieves search for a valuable brooch. It looks like your typical debut feature for a Brit director – stripped back and largely set in a single location, with plenty of twists and turns along the way.
Roberts provides the voiceover in the trailer, and while his awkward, charisma-less intonations may have struck just the right chord (for some) in “Submarine,” they certainly don’t have the same effect here; Roberts’ monotonous delivery was almost enough to turn us off the trailer from the get-go. Those in certain territories will get a chance to judge for themselves soon: the film will get a "key cities" release in the U.K. this coming Friday (and has strangely already had a Russian release) but there are no further international release dates set. U.S. readers, maybe watch out for this On Demand in the coming months, because we’re not all that confident it will make it into North American theaters any time soon. Anyway, check it out, along with the poster, below. [/Film/Kinopoisk]