''Red Mercury'' is a 2005 British film thriller directed by

Roy Battersby Roy John Battersby (20 April 1936 – 10 January 2024) was a British television director, known for his work in drama productions such as '' Between The Lines'', ''Inspector Morse'', '' Cracker'' and '' A Touch of Frost.'' Early in his career, h ...

and starring

Stockard Channing Stockard Channing (born Susan Antonia Williams Stockard; February 13, 1944) is an American actress. List of awards and nominations received by Stockard Channing, Her accolades include three Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and a nomination for an Acade ...

Pete Postlethwaite Peter William Postlethwaite (7 February 1946 – 2 January 2011) was an English character actor. After various stage and minor television appearances, Postlethwaite's first major success arose through the film '' Distant Voices, Still Lives'' ...

Juliet Stevenson Juliet Anne Virginia Stevenson, (born 30 October 1956) is an English actress of stage and screen. She is known for her role in the film '' Truly, Madly, Deeply'' (1991), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Le ...

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and David Bradley.

Plot

The film is a thriller about a terrorist kidnapping. Three Islamist terrorist bomb-makers have just obtained some

red mercury Red mercury is a discredited substance, most likely a hoax perpetrated by con artists who sought to take advantage of gullible buyers on the black market for arms. These con artists described it as a substance used in the creation of nuclear ...

, a semi-mythical explosive. They get a tipoff that their safehouse is about to be raided and they flee on foot from the police. In an attempt to escape they kidnap hostages in a Greek restaurant in London and threaten to detonate a bomb containing the titular explosive. Eventually they are defeated and the hostages are saved and the film ends.

Cast

Production

The film was written, produced and filmed over four months. The film was the first film aimed for a Western audience produced by a new film production company named Inspire, that planned to apply

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is primarily produced in Mumbai. The popular term Bollywood is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (former name of Mumbai) and "Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". The in ...

film production methods to films made in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

: According to the producers the writer,

Farrukh Dhondy Farrukh Dhondy (born 1944) is an British Indians, Indian-born British Parsi writer, playwright, screenwriter and left-wing activist who resides in the United Kingdom. Education Dhondy was born in 1944 in Poona, India, where he attended The Bish ...

, was interviewed by British counter-terrorism officials, to verify that the bomb-plot in the script was unrelated to their active investigations.

Release

The film was sold at the 2005

Cannes Film Market Cannes (, ; , ; ) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The city is ...

. It was released in the UK shortly after the

7 July 2005 London bombings The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters travelling on Transport in London, London's public transport during the ...

, rendering its theme of Islamic terrorism particularly topical. It was screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2006. It did not have a theatrical release in the US, being released to DVD in June 2007.

Reception

Variety compared it to ''

Dog Day Afternoon ''Dog Day Afternoon'' is a 1975 American biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and produced by Martin Bregman and Martin Elfand. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick and Charles Durning. The screenplay ...

'' and ''

Juggernaut A juggernaut (), in current English usage, is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive, and unstoppable. This English usage originates in the mid-nineteenth century. ''Juggernaut'' is the early rendering in English ...

'', as a socially-committed thriller with more talk than action. Their critic praised the technical values and performances, but found some of the plotting to be "sloppy" and "forced" with some characters "underwritten". Jack G Shaheen criticised it for the "one-dimensional" portrayal of the villains.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 0443619, Red Mercury 2005 films British thriller films MI5 in fiction Films scored by Colin Towns 2000s English-language films 2000s British films