Freeze Frame

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Rating 2½


Written and directed by John Simpson

Starring Lee Evans (Sean Veil), Rachael Stirling (Katie Carter), Ian McNeice (Paul Sager), Sean McGinley (Detective Louis Emeric), Colin Salmon (Detective Mountjoy), Rachel O’Riordan (Mary Shaw) and Andrew Wilson (covert cameraman)


Ten years after he was cleared of the brutal murder of a woman and her two young twin daughters, Sean Veil suffers from extreme paranoia and films every moment of his life to provide him with a constant alibi, maintaining a huge library of camcorder tapes in an secure underground location. Louis Emeric, the police detective who investigated the murders, remains convinced that Veil was guilty and, knowing that illness is going to foreshorten his own life, he is obsessed with bringing his suspect to justice before he dies. The forensic pathologist assigned to the case, Paul Sager, has since become a celebrity author of books on forensic profiling and continues to maintain that Veil was guilty, despite the verdict to the contrary. Investigative reporter Katie Carter, however, thinks he is innocent and attempts to gain his trust.

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‘Freeze Frame’ is a 2004 psychological thriller, set in an unspecified location in England, but filmed in Belfast in Northern Ireland, primarily at the now derelict HMP Belfast, more commonly known as Crumlin Road Gaol. Writer and director John Simpson has subsequently directed one further film, the critically slated 2009 direct-to-DVD horror ‘Amusement’.

The popular British stand-up comedian Lee Evans stars in his first non-comic acting role as the paranoid and ambiguous Sean Veil. I don’t really like Evans as a stand-up comedian and rarely find his frenetic take on Norman Wisdom remotely funny, even though he is highly respected (Evans himself claims that Norman Wisdom is not an influence, although the comparison is frequently made). His film appearances have tended to be along these same lines, but not here, where he is surprisingly effective.

The film draws on modern day surveillance techniques, incorporating this into the general theme of paranoia and the suggestion that we live in a world in which “Big Brother” is always watching us, but we cannot be sure that we can trust what we see and how we interpret what we see. Veil claims his innocence, but his behaviour is peculiar and makes us suspicious of him. Emeric is obsessed with bringing Veil to justice, irrespective whether he is guilty or innocent, and his own behaviour is, if anything, even more bizarre than that of Veil. Sager is more concerned with his celebrity status and maintaining his success and wealth than anything else. Katie Carter’s true motivation is less than crystal clear. Everything becomes blurred and it is constantly uncertain where the truth ends and the lies begin. I was often put in mind of Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’, although the two stories are really not really similar.

A decent job, generally, is made on what is clearly a very small budget and a persuasive sense of claustrophobia is built up. Having said this, I wasn’t emotionally engaged in the story, finding it interesting, but at the same time sometimes bordering on tedious. I also felt that it degenerated into a rather histrionic climax.

Six reviews are collected at Rotten Tomatoes, where the film is given an 83% fresh rating.

Review posted 23 July 2007



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Doctor Who: Planet Of The Dead

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Rating 2½


Directed by James Strong

Written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts

Starring David tenant, Michelle Ryan, Lee Evans, Noma Dumezweni, Ellen Thomas, Reginald Tsiboe, Adam James, Victoria Doherty, David Ames, Daniel Kaluuya and Keith Parry


Lady Christina de Souza (Michelle Ryan), a notorious jewel thief, is cornered by police following the daring theft of a priceless artefact from a museum. She boards a number 200 bus to make her getaway. The Doctor (David Tennant) boards the same bus, which is then sucked through a ripple to a desert on a distant planet. It now becomes a race against time to steer the bus back through the ripple to Earth before the passengers are eaten alive by a swarm of flying parasitic vampire-like creatures.

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‘Planet of the Dead’ is the first of four one-hour specials that will be broadcast by the BBC during 2009 and the early part of 2010, after which David Tennant and executive producer Russell T Davies will leave the show, to be replaced by Matt Smith (who becomes the third Doctor since the show was revived in 2005, the eleventh in all) and Steven Moffat. It follows the pattern already set in the previous “specials”, dating back to the excellent ‘The Christmas Invasion’ in December 2005, with the story told at a breathless pace from start to finish.

Unfortunately, that pattern has now become rather stale and predictable. In the rush to give us a piece of Indiana Jones-like action-adventure, the story is given no room to breathe. This is an episode that might have worked rather well had it been given longer to unfold and had we been allowed to see how the various passengers on the bus cope with the inexplicable situation they find themselves in. It needed to draw breath every once in a while.

Having said that, there are some nice touches here and it is quite possibly exactly what the majority of viewers want, a piece of rollicking escapism on a Saturday early evening. Michelle Ryan is good in her starring guest role and works well with David Tennant. I am not a fan of Lee Evans, but he is not quite as annoying here as I feared he would be, although he was required to give us nothing more than a comic turn that paid little attention to the history of the show - we were surely not really expected to believe that this was a scientist attached to UNIT?

At the end of the episode was a short trailer for the next “special”, ‘The Waters of Mars’, which will be broadcast sometime in late 2009. It looks promising.

‘Planet of the Dead’ attracted an audience in the region of 8.7 million viewers, equating to approximately 40% of all television viewers in its timeslot.

Review posted 12 April 2009



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