Its drop onto the streaming service will deny the film a theatrical outing, but what it should do is get the movie an instant mass audience, and alert as many people as possible to this calling card of one of our best emerging talents. To go into more detail would spoil the experience of Palmer’s taut, edgy, career-making modern masterpiece, so I won’t, but what I will do is go into the artistic quality of the piece which has led this to become such a find after quite the understated, limited publicity-driven streaming debut. It is here where thing quickly go awry, an accident leading to a chain of events which will see their perfect lads’ getaway turn into one from hell.

After a first, very alcohol-fuelled evening, one in which the two lads run into the locals in the nearby, solitary pub, the two head off into the woods to grab them a prize. Marcus is planning a weekend to remember – eating, drinking and hunting in the deep forests of the area.

It’s shocking, violent and tense from the outset, but it is also supremely constructed, stage and, if you can pardon the pun, executed.Ĭalibre follows two lifelong friends in Vaughn Carter (Jack Lowden) and Marcus Trenton (Martin McCann), both of whom are off to the rural climbs of the Scottish Highlands for a weekend of adventure – Vaughn is weeks away from becoming a father for the first time and leaves a heavily pregnant partner waving him off behind. Not knowing what happens is best for this taut thriller, one that obviously draws its influences from the like of Straw Dogs, and Deliverance, the film is far from an easy watch. Outstanding is certainly one adjective you could describe this film with, but it doesn’t come close to doing this movie justice.

Calibre reviewĪs I type this, Calibre has just gone live after Netflix just hours after winning the prestigious Michael Powell Award, which is awarded to an outstanding British feature fiction. Pin 1 Calibre Review: Receiving its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival ahead of its release on Netflix is Matt Palmer’s feature debut, a taut, very impressing feature that might just be one of the best low-budget British genre pieces of the year.Ĭalibre review by Paul Heath.

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