Smart pacing, sharp editing and classy cameos elevate this Yorkshire-set tale above many recent crime capers
The team behind 2016’s eye-catching indie Chubby Funny – producer Helen Simmons and director Harry Michell – return with another agreeably off-beam
comedy, this time with a starrier cast and a goofy, Four Lions-ish premise. It’s the tale of sibling Christian hitmen who, envious of the column inches logged by rival fundamentalists, set out to kill a Dawkins-like author at a literary festival in Ilkley.
Tim (Harry Melling) is the childlike younger brother, ill-suited to grisly murder; the uptight Vic (Tom Brooke) an unrepentant sociopath. Their target (Roger Allam, master of glib dismissiveness) need not worry unduly: an astutely timed prologue shows our would-be ruthless killers stalking a rambler who looks just enough like Allam for the first of several terrible mistakes to be made.