Well, by eck!
CLEANSKIN (made by the UK Film Studio) has a lot of balls doing what it just did.
“Cleanskin” starring Sean Bean, Charlotte Rampling, James Fox and Michelle Ryan takes the standard 'lone vigiliante tasked by MI5 to take out a domestic terror cell' story (as described in this wonderfully misleading trailer) and flip it on its head.
Sean Bean stars as the lone vigilante, Charlotte Rampling his controller. It was a very strange film to watch because slowly, like a prolongued water torture scene, you realize ... you realize that this film's playing with your mind. The good guys are painted bad. The bad guys are painted a vague editorial color to suit the film's ulterior motive.
That ulterior motive being to SUGGEST QUITE PROFOUNDLY that 'not all terrorist acts' are cut + dry, black + white. There are some lovely structural sub-plots going on. THe film makes you feel, "Wait a minute, haven't I seen this sort of reporting of events before? On mainstream news?"
You think of 'spent assets' like Gareth Williams, Jean Charles de Menezes, Dr David Kelly and others, taken out and the scene CLEANED PROFESSIONALLY. Hell, you could think of the way all the steel was removed to China from the WTC crime scene of 9/11 Manhattan if you want. You could remind yourself that all the CCTV didn't work on the morning of 7/7 London. You could remember the deportation of cleric Abu Qatada. You could think of Tony Blair's landslide victory in 2005, if you want. It's all there, in the film, like a battery-acid spectral flavor. Very odd, strange, unnerving dimension that lifts this brave film above the usual dross.
We see how everybody is expendable in CLEANSKIN's Grand Chess Game against You The People, and T.H.E.Y. (aka The Hierarchy Enslaving You) would have succeeded, too, if it weren't for the 'loyalty' of one lone nutter to his country. The film ends with a rain-soaked suicide by wrist slashing in the woods. You can't make this shit up.
BONUS MATERIAL: here's an interview with the film's director Hadi Hajaig.
