Young Adam (2003)
Directed by David Mackenzie
A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.
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What critics compared Young Adam to
The “Kick-Ass” star is barely recognizable in his grimy disguise as a John the Baptist-like wild man, though Mackenzie has a talent for eliciting career-best performances from his cast (Ewan McGregor in “Young Adam,” Jack O’Connell in “Starred Up”), and Pine and these two co-stars stand out from an ensemble that can otherwise be hard to keep straight.
The film is well shot by Director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hell or High Water), but fails to deliver any real emotional gravitas.
Overall, Pine comes across more like captain of the Lacrosse team than outlaw king, though interested parties may note that the director of Young Adam has once again convinced one of his stars to flash the full monty.
In 2003, he emerged with Young Adam (starring Ewan McGregor), a moody yarn set in 1950s Glasgow, but since then has only occasionally revisited his native land.
The filmmaker also has a history of including some very warped eroticism into his films, from a genuinely disturbing scene in Young Adam (2003) involving custard, condiments and spanking to the manic rutting throughout his haywire epidemic drama Perfect Sense (2011).
MacKenzie made well regarded Scottish films like Young Adam but it was 2016’s Hell or High Water that truly made him a force to be reckoned with.
Add to that a pleasing soundtrack composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and stunning cinematography by Giles Nuttgens, who has made several previous movies with David Mackenzie (Young Adam being the standout), and Hell or High Water has what we need to quench our summer cinema drought.
His other films — the powerful Irish prison drama Starred Up, the science fiction romance Perfect Sense, the Ewan McGregor / Tilda Swinton mystery-drama Young Adam — similarly explore passionate but muted relationships, and the conflict between self-interest and sacrifice, especially among people too solemn and self-contained to talk through their feelings.
At first glance, “Hell or High Water” would seem to be just the candidate—it is written by Taylor Sheridan , whose first produced screenplay became last year’s largely acclaimed thriller “ Sicario ,” and directed by David Mackenzie , the British filmmaker behind such intriguing works as “Young Adam,” “Perfect Sense” and “Starred Up." "Hell or High Water" even features a cast led by the national treasure that is Jeff Bridges .
But the sense of decline and drift that infuses “Hell or High Water” has more in common with his ferociously bleak 2003 drama, “Young Adam,” whose hero (played by Ewan McGregor) shares Toby’s broody inwardness.
Scottish director David Mackenzie ("Young Adam") captures the west Texas landscapes (filmed a bit west of Texas, in New Mexico) in all their harsh beauty.
Yes, American scripter Taylor Sheridan (Sicario) and Scottish director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) have somehow made a western — and a very good one, at that — in which the desperadoes are dealing with predatory lenders and dodgy debt relief.
It also affirms the raw talents of both David Mackenzie (Young Adam) and Jamie Bell (who's come a long way since Billy Elliot).
David Mackenzie is back to some of his Young Adam tricks in Hallam Foe, and once again, the most riddlesome tricks of all are a) how he gets the movie to spring as excitingly as it does from a sketchy story with significant limitations, and b) why the movie fails to work a little better despite all the evident and encouraging talent involved.