Utøya – July 22 first published by RealCrime Magazine On Friday, 22 July, 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a van bomb outside Government buildings in Oslo, killing eight, and then, dressed as a policeman, shot dead 69 people at a Labour Party Youth League summer camp on the island of Utøya. Text at the beginning of Erik Poppe’s Utøya – July…
Dogman first published by RealCrime Magazine Dogman‘s title sounds like some superhero’s moniker, yet is in fact the name of a store offering dog-grooming and kennel services run by a smiling, diminutive owner based on a real person who operated out of Rome’s dilapidated Magliana neighbourhood, by the Tiber (although the film was in fact…
Concealed first published by RealCrime Magazine After moving to South Africa with his girlfriend Sally (Nadia Townsend), for the first time in six years actor Max (Simon Lyndon) returns to Sydney for an audition. Upon their arrival someone tampers with Sally’s luggage, and Max has the sense that they are being followed. So when, the…
211 first published by RealCrime Magazine Already recreated in Yves Simoneau’s made-for-TV docudrama 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out (2003), the 1997 ‘Battle of North Hollywood‘ (1997) also inspires 211, even if York Alec Shackleton’s film shifts the post-heist shootout to present-day Massachusetts (or Sofia, Bulgaria doubling for it), changes the two heavily armed bank…
The Third Murder (Sandome no Satsujin) first published by RealCrime Magazine “You don’t need understanding or empathy to defend a client,” states defence lawyer Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama). “You’re not going to become friends.” Shigemori is currently defending fifty-something Misumi (Kōji Yakusho) on a murder charge. In the opening scene of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Third Murder,…
Terminal first published by RealCrime Magazine “There is a place like no other on Earth, a land full of wonder, mystery and danger. Some say, to survive it, you need to be as mad as a Hatter – which luckily, I am.” Writer/director Vaughn Stein’s feature debut Terminal opens with these words, uttered in a…
Survivors Guide To Prison first published by RealCrime Magazine “This isn’t a film, it’s a movement,” states text at the end of Matthew Cooke’s Survivors Guide To Prison. Indeed, if the absence of an apostrophe from that title sounds like an attempt to break free from the prison-house of language, the film itself first exposes the insidious structures of the United States’ penal…
My Friend Dahmer first published by RealCrime Magazine The actions undertaken by Jeffrey Dahmer in his adulthood are well documented. One of the twentieth century’s most notorious serial killers, between 1978 and 1991 he raped and murdered 17 male pickups, committing various outrages (dismemberment, necrophilia, cannibalism, trophy preservation) on their corpses. My Friend Dahmer, however, is not so much about the monster…
King of Thieves first published by RealCrime Magazine You probably know the score. After all, the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary took place not so very long ago, over the Easter Bank Holiday of 2015, and was said to be “the largest burglary in English legal history”, with around 200 million pounds’ worth of cash and jewellery…
Bad Samaritan first published by RealCrime Magazine Bad Samaritan opens with a flashback: a young boy whips a horse as an unseen woman pleads with him to stop, and then he raises a pistol and shoots. This is a primal scene – a significant event from that past that represents the moment where a person’s formative pathology takes root. Cut to…
Sicilian Ghost Story first published by RealCrime Magazine 12-year-old Luna (Julia Jedlikowska) follows Giuseppe (Gaetano Fernandez) into the woods after school. Here, as a butterfly rests on Giuseppe’s hand and a weasel brushes past Luna’s foot, the children are close to nature in their Eden of innocence – even as a POV shot suggests a…