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

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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...
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‘I’ve failed, badly – and I’m good with it’: James McAvoy on class, comfort and carnage

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He says that acting is a gamble – but is a dead cert to terrify audiences with new film Speak No Evil. The Scottish actor talks about marriage, therapy – and why Ken Loach would never cast him

He is a funny character, James McAvoy. I meet him in one of those fancy Soho hotels where the cast of films that are about to be massive assemble so they can all be interviewed on the same day. And McAvoy’s new psychological thriller, Speak No Evil, will be massive. A remake of the 2022 Danish original, it is just as terrifying, with one difference.

McAvoy, 45, is personable and urbane. He is wearing a suit, but looks like a guy who changes into cargo shorts as soon as he gets home. “I’m really lucky in a lot of ways, mainly that my granny’s all over me,” he says. “I’ve definitely got a large dose of what she has.” His parents divorced when he was 11, and his mother was ill, so he went to live with his grandparents in Drumchapel, Glasgow. Later, considering class, he describes his childhood tangentially, talking about why Ken Loach would never cast him. “I’m too much of an actor. And I’m, like: ‘I grew up on the council estate you shot half your films on!’ But I’m too much of an actor.”

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