Red Road (2006)

Jackie works as a CCTV operator. Each day she watches over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze...

Red Road won the 2006 Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival. One night while Jackie (Kate Dickie) is working she see's a man that sends her into a panic. She frantically begins calling people trying to find out if he has been released from prison early. She begins following the man, at work through the cameras, and in her off time in person.

I think what made this movie good also made me dislike it. This man is supposed to be kept a mystery, we know he was in prison and had something to do with Jackie, but Director Andrea Arnold wants to keep us guessing why the entire movie. At first it plays very well, as she follows him in person you think that if he see's her he will recognize her and that will start a confrontation. Then after they have a conversation and he hasn't recognized her you start to wonder why she has such an interest in him. And by the end of the movie I was beginning the think that Jackie is crazy.

Jackie lives a very cut off life. She doesn't speak to her parents much, she hadn't seen her sister in years before her wedding.She doesn't get together with friends. She works a job where she doesn't really have to deal much with other people, but instead gets to watch other peoples lives, which she enjoys. But we get the sense that things haven't always been this way.

The film kept me interested throughout because I wanted to know what this strange relationship that Jackie had with this man, and some of the scenes were very intense in large part to the sound design that was used instead of a music score, which I found brilliant. By the end of the movie though I had lost most of my interest, maybe in part to the heavy Scottish accents where I couldn't understand some of the dialogue or maybe to the fact that it took so long to get to the reveal and when it finally did the payoff didn't seem to be worth it.

When to Watch Rating: While Plunging Your Head in Boiling Water

Available on Netflix