RANSOM, REDEFINED
Noel Clarke-scripted thriller 10X10 is a kidnapping movie with surprises
“YOU MIGHT THINK, ‘Oh no, a man’s kidnapped a woman! She’s the victim!’” says Luke Evans of his new thriller, 10X10. “But Noel [Clarke] has managed to spin that on its head. It takes a very different trajectory.”
Good thing too, because that basic set-up has been done a million times. Evans’ Lewis creepily stalks Kelly Reilly’s Cathy before abducting her from a car park. Soon she’s bound, gagged and locked in the 10’ x 10’ cell he has prepared in his remote house. But Lewis is not a sexual predator or violent psycho, as we might expect. “This is a man who has been pushed to do something that is completely out of his comfort zone,” promises Evans. “For him to kidnap this woman has taken something. It all comes down to this internal torment: he has to know the answers to something that he can’t move on from.”
It began as a challenge: 10X10’s formidably prolific screenwriter/ producer Noel Clarke set out to write three scripts in 90 days. One became 2012’s Storage 24; another, he says, will never be made. The third, inspired by the tone of uneasy 2005 thriller Hard Candy, became 10X10.
But the multi-hyphenate decided not to direct. “With the best will in the world, the action could be seen as gratuitously violent if a male director had done it,” Clarke says. Directing duties passed to newcomer Suzi Ewing, who was keen to find the texture in the character.
“I’m trying to give a woman’s eye to violence, and not glorify or glamourise it,” Ewing explains. “I want to make the fight scenes look like they hurt and find a way for each character to fight according to their gender and background.”
The film is a two-hander, a psychological game where the balance of power swings between Lewis and Cathy. “They both think what they’re doing is right,” says Evans. “It’s two broken individuals, damaged in very different ways, and the damage doesn’t really stop.” Whatever happens in the end, the therapy bills are going to be pretty significant for these two.
10X10 IS OUT ON 27 AUGUST ON DVD AND DOWNLOAD