Quite simply the worst UK film of the year so far. Payback Season is the first time effort from writer and director Danny Donnelly and it’s a stinker.The Playstation title alone clues you in on who this low-budget Hoodie-Estate morality tale actioner is pitched at. Starring Adam Deacon, this sloppy immature film reinforces every possible stereotype regarding life on the estate, complete with a pointless soundtrack of paranoid low end wobbles all in a vain effort to moralise the makings of sporting success. It’s embarrassingly cliched, clueless and utterly self-conscious.
This being the first showcase of BAFTA winner Adam Deacon’s acting Skillz since receiving his token award from the mighty Imperial instution, expectations were realistically low. Do people really expect Deacon to be doing anything more than these hoodie roles? In what looks like a part specifically written for him, playing, a ‘Professional Footballer’, the jockey-sized actor is a puny presence on the big screen. Even next to normal teenage boys he is nothing more than a smudge of ineffectual blandness on the lens. Deacon, in the role of a Premier League footballer really is an insult to footballers of every grade. The movie itself focuses on nothing more than the trappings and priviledges of his position, and it’s here that the cliches come on thick. Footballer in a tacky west end club enjoying the Cristal, footballer handing out gifts to his mom and younger impressionable bro. Driving his White Ferrari back to his old hood to impress the crew. Fine if this were a parody piece, a little satire to shake the already cemented image of the estate hoodie come good. But no.. it’s self consciously played for the audience it’s aimed at.
The extortion plot which the movie hedges all its bets on also comes over as unrealistic and shallow but allows David Ajala’s psychopathic Barron to put Deacon in his place with his menacing and vicious streaks. While the dialogue is painfully mind numbing, Ajalas forces at least some tension into his scenes, and able to display a wonderful predatory nature with a calm self assuredness. The obligatory love interest with Nichola Burley as a reporter fails to materialise anything further in Deacon’s character while his physio sidekick played by Geezzer Leo Gregory massages all but the look of confusion and stupidity out of his face. Another token part by some old footballer playing Deacon’s agent adds to the further triteness of it. Flashy london aerial shots, slow mo’ed ultra violence and lashings mood music can’t help make this any worse a film. But they do.
Director: Danny Donnelly
Writers: Jenny Fitzpatrick, Danny Donnelly
Stars: Nichola Burley, David Ajala, Leo Gregory
Runtime: 91 min
Country: UK
Film Rating: 
