Red Road was one of those rare British films that did well in Sight & Sound magazine’s 2006 end of year round-up, when many of the journal’s critics put together their Top 5 for the year. So, of course, I was duty bound to watch it and see what all the fuss was about.

The focal point of the story is Jackie, a young woman who works in a CCTV monitoring office, overseeing the comings and goings of Glasgow at all hours of the day and night. One night she is shaken when she feels certain she has spotted the man who killed her husband in a car accident (through dangerous and/or drunk driving) — a man she assumed was still in prison. Upon

establishing that the man has indeed served his moment, she thereupon sets out to stalk him, both by CCTV and on foot, becoming ever more obsessed…

Directed by Andrea Arnold (the “Best Live-Action Short” Oscar winner in 2005), Red Road is a snail-paced but intense and riveting little thriller, sometimes leaving you nearly breathless with the situations in which our heroine finds herself. Shot according to Dogme 95 rules (though you wouldn’t necessarily notice it), that is a slow burner, for certain, and several scenes will undoubtedly stay with you for quite some moment. I was quietly impressed, and I am perhaps more so now than I was at the duration. 71 out of 100.

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