Rating: 3/10
Running Time: 92 minutes
US Certificate: R UK Certificate: 18
It’s grim up North. Very grim if Freight is anything to go by. Freight is about a Russian gang operating out of Leeds in Northern England, trafficking men and women from Eastern Europe to work as sex slaves, illegal fighters and cheap workers in Britain’s underworld. When they cross local businessman Gabe Taylor (Billy Murray – the ex-Bill actor not the genius comedian), a man who sells toilets, a war escalates. The nasty men (Russian, Romanian, Georgian? Who knows, nobody could be bothered to ask) kidnap Gabe’s daughter (Aikmann) but the entrepreneur fights back.
Suitably, when his character deals with shit every day, Billy Murray speaks it, acts like it and stars in it. Not often do I find myself missing the inclusion of Jason Statham in a rambling actionfest but today was the day. Freight is a mishmash of poorly conceived storylines and dialogue, every ill known to man and some decent action. In a way, Freight is similar to 2008’s Eastern Promises which worked along the sex trafficking premise too but was executed much more impressively with characters you can empathise with and less of an all-out blanket coverage on the world’s evils.
Stuart St. Paul’s effort is a poorly made British gangster film that’s admirably trying to do something a bit different but falling short altogether and providing us with a mess instead.
It's Got: Lines like "I will burn every toilet you have!", generic "Russian" bad guys, some serviceable action
It Needs: To be less of a cobbled together mess of the world's evils.
Summary
Freight is notable mainly for the fact that it’s only the second ever film I’ve seen set in my unremarkable home town of Leeds. After getting over this shock I was just treated to clichés, a poorly thought out storyline and dialogue and a little bit of serviceable action.