Violence
Against anything which could be regarded as prudence, Henry Violence has returned to his old neighbourhood, seeking out Jimmy Jazz at La Hacienda, focus of the punk scene and the drug trade, Jimmy controlling the supply of red on which Henry’s ex-girlfriend Charlotte Cola is hooked but Jimmy seeing no reason to do anything for the man who walked out on them all when shows up asking for a favour: “You always liked fighting more than you liked winning.”
With other factions established in the city, Waters running his own rival drug trade, there are also new operators, Charlie Rocket and Bats, causing a ruckus at “the Castle” and leaving bodies on the floor, Bats’ tattoo captured on camera and making it seem like Henry was behind it, Jimmy sending his enforcer Dead Ramone to apprehend him, and though she’s smart enough to realise he had no reason to provoke a man he needs a favour from she’s also savvy enough to not let that get in the way of doing her job.
Its international premiere at FrightFest at Glasgow Film Festival, Violence was a raucous start to Saturday morning, a slice of low-budget Canadian urban dystopia directed by Connor Marsden from a script co-written with Devin Myler and William Woods starring Silent Night, Deadly Night‘s Rohan Campbell as Henry, Almost Human‘s Sarah Grey as Charlotte, Malignant‘s Maddie Hasson as Charlie, Thanksgiving‘s Tomaso Sanelli as Bats, and Wynonna Earp’s Joris Jarsky and Greg Bryk as brutal businessman Jimmy and the seductive but sadistic Waters.
An alternative eighties where the punks and straight edges fight for control of the decayed streets a few blocks over from Blade Runner shot through with the desperation, urgency and musical anarchy of Streets of Fire, every surface plastered with band posters, with Charlotte placed on the circle bus route to keep her safe she’s not in the mood for listening to Henry’s apologies even if she was capable, going round the circuit, no way out for those in debt.
Out of her mind on red, she’s a lost cause which Henry is unwilling to abandon a second time, driven by guilt in a town in trouble, any attempt to clean up only meaning his own hands will get dirtier, Charlie the newcomer in town, somewhere between guerilla leader and Joan of Arc, comfortable with creatively nasty torture if it serves her purpose of ultimately seizing La Hacienda but open to allying with those who will follow her cause of freeing the city from the drugs and the pushers.
The street people all knowing each other, there is little space for kindness or forgiveness, Violence well named as Henry’s crusade unleashes a righteous rain of blood, full of bullet holes but improbably still moving, hoping to defy the odds to be the last man standing, or at least staggering, clinging to memories of what he would like to believe were better times through an outrageous night of betrayals and the slim chance of redemption in a broken city ready to ignite.
Glasgow Film Festival continues until Sunday 8th March
