Executioner review – sleazy MP hams it up with sex worker in darkly comic blackmail thriller

Based on actor-director Peter Benedict’s own play this tiny-budget thriller has the feel of a stagey recording as the double-crosses pile up higher than an MP’s promises The fictional shadow cabinet minister at the centre of this darkly comic blackmail thriller is offended when the male prostitute he has hired describes his reputation as “colourful”. Colourful MPs support bloodsports and wear bow ties, he says; he prefers the term “maverick”. It’s never said out loud, but clearly he sits on the right in political terms; you can tell from the sneer in his voice as he utters the word “proletariat”. Executioner is adapted by Peter Benedict from his play Deadlock, with a staginess that feels a bit much for the screen. Benedict also co-directs and stars as the MP, called Robert Marlowe, giving a lip-smacking performance that makes Hannibal Lecter look like a character from kitchen sink realism. The entire film is set in the basement studio of Marlowe’s country pile, where he dabbles in pott...

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington reuniting for Akira Kurosawa remake

The pair, who last worked together on 2006’s Inside Man, will reimagine the 1963 crime drama High and Low for Apple and A24

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington are teaming up for the fifth time, reimagining Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime drama High and Low.

The pair, whose previous projects include Malcolm X and He Got Game, will start filming a reinterpretation in March. Based on the novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, the original film stars Toshiro Mifune as a wealthy man in ruin after paying the ransom for a kidnapping.

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