TIGER RAID – Review

Review by Mark Longden

Just out is this fascinating movie, based on the stage play “Radio Luxembourg” by Mick Donnellan. Two Irish men, Joe and Paddy, mercenaries of some sort, are driving through the semi-desert landscape of an unnamed country, bantering about their lives; then they stop to kill a guard post full of local soldiers, then they carry on with their day as if they’d only stopped to get a coffee.

The first half of “Tiger Raid” is essentially a two-hander, and it’s kudos to actors Brian Gleeson (Joe) and Damien Molony (Paddy) for inhabiting the characters so well, two men who look legitimately filthy and worn out – it was a surprise to check their IMDB page and find two clean-cut men looking back. There’s no easy way to categorise either man, as the power in the relationship shifts as they go along. They both work for a man called Dave, unseen, and near the beginning it appears he’s asking Paddy to kill Joe; Joe talks of Dave’s loyalty tests, and how if they don’t mean anything to you, it’s not a proper test; and Joe mentions how he killed his girlfriend and brother, after he found them in bed together, and buried them in his back yard. Is this bravado? How psychotic are these two men?

When they get to their destination, a large house in the middle of nowhere, to kidnap Shadha (Sofia Boutella, “Kingsman: The Secret Service”), things start going a little further off the rails. Who is Shadha to Paddy? What’s the real story behind Joe’s previous partner? Who the hell is Dave? Perhaps the layers of lies and self-deceit are peeled back, perhaps they’re not.

Filmed in Jordan, it does a remarkably good job of expanding beyond its stage origin. It’s a largely alien, empty world, in part due to the actions of people like Joe and Paddy, and this is thanks to cinematographer Si Bell, who’s been behind the camera for some of recent British TV’s best output. It’s really quite beautiful in places. Also, it’s the writing debut for all three credited writers, including playwright Donnellan, so the quality of the dialogue in the first half, as the men prod and poke and half-attempt to bond with each other, is even more remarkable.

It’s a movie of two halves, ultimately. The first half, with just the two men, is brilliant, but things go off the rails a little when Shadha arrives. She’s a fascinating character, and her reveals are wonderful moments, but the piling on of “plot” doesn’t really suit the film, unfortunately – it works better as a mood / character piece, I feel, and it loses its way a little towards the end, a shame as it started really strongly. According to the one review of the play I could find, the two main characters wear clown make up which gradually comes off as their true faces show through – there’s half an attempt to do something similar here but I’m not sure it really works out (plus, it seems to be about actually stealing a tiger, which would have been interesting).

It’s a wonderful experiment to take a play and really turn it into a movie, not just a filmed play, so that is to be commended; unfortunately, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. But worth your time nontheless, I think.

Check out the trailer for TIGER RAID: