Yahoo News Colin Morgan's new movie Dead Shot is a grim and gritty thriller
Gritty thriller Dead Shot has taken a while to arrive on our screens – the first draft of the script was written by Top Boy’s Ronan Bennett back in 2012, and John Boyega and Jack Reynor were originally cast as the leads in 2020 (when the film was known by the title Borderland) before production was postponed due to the pandemic and they both went on to other projects instead.
Filming eventually took place in 2022, and the end result features a host of impressive names – Merlin's Colin Morgan, Mark Strong, I May Destroy You’s Aml Ameen, and Rogue One’s Felicity Jones – in a dark revenge drama set during The Troubles in the 1970s.
Michael (Morgan) is an Irish paramilitary in 1975 who wants to permanently walk away from the IRA unit he is part of in South Armagh. However, when his heavily pregnant wife is shot dead by a British sergeant named Tempest (Ameen), Michael vows to take revenge – a mission that sends him to London to seek out Tempest at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign there.
Focusing a drama on the complicated history of the Troubles can be a very difficult path to tread, and past movies have either been excellent, powerful, raw films (The Crying Game, '71, In The Name of the Father) or the polar opposite – thunderously tone-deaf movies like A Prayer For The Dying, The Devil's Own (Brad Pitt as an IRA member?) and Blown Away (Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones as former bombers) among them.
Dead Shot falls somewhere in between – it's not offensive or ill-advised, but it's not particularly memorable either.
Instead, it is a relentlessly grim story in which no one is particularly sympathetic (except Tempest’s poor girlfriend, Ruth, who unwittingly gets caught in the middle). But while it makes for bleak viewing, it does boast strong performances from the cast – most notably Ameen and Morgan as the two men who are on a collision course towards each other that can only end badly.
Felicity Jones and Mark Strong – in one of his regular ‘serious Englishman in authority’ roles – are fine if under used, and there is nice support from a cast that also includes Tom Vaughn-Laylor and Giri/Haji’s Sophia Brown as Ruth.
Bennett's script also feels real and believable, touching on the personal stories as well as the ideology on both sides of the conflict, and while much of the direction (from brothers Charles and Thomas Guard) is gloomy and a bit pedestrian, there are a couple of impressive action sequences and the tense opening attack at the start of the movie that will draw you in and keep you watching just to see how Michael and Tempest's story of revenge plays out.
How to watch Dead Shot at home
If you fancy checking out Dead Shot, it is available on Sky Cinema in the UK and also streaming service NOW. Sky Cinema features over 1000 movies on demand – if you're a Sky subscriber but don't have access to the movie channels, it currently costs £12 extra per month for a minimum 18-month contract. And if you're not a Sky subscriber, you can access all of the latest movie premieres with a Sky Cinema Membership from NOW.
You can also sign up with one of Sky's ongoing deals — including the Sky + Cinema + Netflix package that gives you a bunch of Sky channels (including Cinema) and access to everything on Netflix, for £37 per month over an 18-month period.
Dead Shot is available to watch now on Sky Cinema and NOW.
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