The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Films of the Week Forbidden love, morality and the value of freedom
What’s it called?
Hunted
What’s it about?
An eight-part drama from the company behind the excellent Blackout, Hunted starts with four prisoners breaking out of a US maximum security prison. They jump the guards, steal a truck and somehow manage to grab a cache of weapons leaving them armed, mobile and dangerous. Just how dangerous becomes clear to investigating officer Emily Barnes, a US Marshall, when she’s called in to head the team tasked with the men’s recapture. With one prison officer dead, her superiors breathing down her neck and her copybook already blotted thanks to a previous case she’s under pressure to ensure a quick result. Four hours after the breakout the cons have robbed a shop and the chase is on.
Who’s in it?
Emily Barnes is voiced by acclaimed actress Parker
Posey (Dr Smith in Netflix series Lost In Space) and her partner Anthony Morra by another familiar face from Netflix, Brandon Scott (13 Reasons Why).
What’s so good about it?
It’s so fast-paced it leaves you breathless – a TV remake seems inevitable.
Fun fact …
Hunted is the first in a series of scripted podcast dramas from Dick Wolf, the man behind longrunning TV franchise Law & Order, and it’s produced in association with content providers Endeavor Audio.
Where do I find it?
Hunted is available to download from iTunes or to listen to on the Endeavor Audio website.
For fans of …
Prison Break, Law & Order.
BARRY DIDCOCK
BARRY DIDCOCK
Disobedience, Film 4, Tuesday, 9pm
Rfriends only gradually become clear. Weisz is typically dark and intense, a chain-smoking interloper from the outside world who sets the mores and morals of the Orthodox community into sharp relief, and Nivola, hidden behind a thick beard and the sober black garb of an Orthodox Jew, is a brooding presence throughout.
But it’s McAdams who’s the revelation – particularly if you last saw her in the Netflix car crash Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga, playing kooky Icelandic singer Sigrit
and for 2013 film Gloria, a big winner on the film festival circuit which he subsequently remade in English starring Julianne Moore and John Turturro.
Both of those films centred on female characters and told stories of women finding strength and love in extremis.
Disobedience is no different
– it was slightly overlooked on release but it’s well worth a second look
The Hater, Netflix Now streaming
DIRECTED by young Polish filminveigles maker Jan Komasa, whose previous film Corpus Christi was nominated for the Best International Feature Film award at this year’s Oscars, The Hater was picked up by Netflix after winning top prize at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. Komasa, then, is clearly a man to watch.
A (very loose) sequel to his full-length feature debut Suicide Room, from 2011, The Hater follows blank-faced young sociopath Tomasz (Maciej Musiałowski) as he is thrown out of law school for plagiarism and his way into the lives of the Krasucka family – wealthy Warsaw residents who used to holiday in his village with their two daughters.
Mother Zofia (Danuta Stenka) runs an upmarket art gallery (typical exhibit: a wave sculpture made from clothes worn by asylum seekers) while father Robert (Top Of The Lake’s Jacek Koman) wanders around looking cool.
Tomasz becomes obsessed with the drug-taking, hardpartying youngest daughter
Gabi (Vanessa Aleksander), stalking her online, and then blags his way into a position with a disreputable PR company whose main source of income comes from using fake social media accounts to discredit their clients’ rivals.
When their targets include a gay, liberal politician standing for mayor of Warsaw, the amoral Tomasz uses his skills of manipulation and covert surveillance to befriend a farright activist and vlogger within the cyberspace of a violent computer game to give him a real life mission.
Set against the backdrop of fake news, social media, far-right street demonstrations, strident nationalism and competing political ideologies – liberal, proEU sentiment on the one hand, xenophobia and religious intolerance on the other – The Hater is a dark and at times deeply troubling snapshot of a modern Europe beset by fear, paranoia and selfdoubt.
Chai: Oh yeah! After I finish a season, I have my sixpack back and everything – and two months after, it’s gone.
Josh: There’s heaps of action in the second series – a lot more than in the first series. But, without going into it, Pigsy gets incapacitated, so I didn’t have to do as much running. These guys were fighting around me, trying to carry me up a mountain, drag me around on a stretcher; that was really good. Unfortunately, Chai sort of accidentally dropped the stretcher and sat on my head which I found quite funny.
Chai: The whole crew was on the ground laughing. I hope they use it in the show!
WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PLAYING THESE CHARACTERS?
Chai: The costumes. I love getting into costume. It just makes me feel like an actual superhero.
Josh: You’ve got a very hero-y vibe – I’m basically wearing a blanket. We
Chai: Yeah, actually; quite a lot in Europe. I was doing a couple of conventions there for some of the other shows I do and a lot of the people that come up to me just rave about Monkey and how they’re excited about the second series.
It’s great to see the support, it really helps with everything.
The New Legends Of Monkey, on Netflix