This gritty Scottish movie deserves the five (Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress) Scottish BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards it won, not to mention the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.
Jackie (Kate Dickie) is a widowed CCTV operator (she keeps an eye on the monitors for the Closed Circuit cameras which have caused so much complaint about the UK becoming a BigBrotherish nanny state). She is having an occasional affair with a married man and isn't getting much pleasure out of it. Her coworkers, mostly older and male, all seem to care about her in a brotherly way and her relationship with her in-laws is awkward at best. We see no signs of any close friendships in her life.
One night she spots Clyde (Tony Curran), the man responsible for her husband and daughter's deaths, on the monitor. She thought he wasn't out of prison for another three years and ends up essentially stalking him through the cameras - hoping for a slip up which will send him back to prison.
When Clyde seems to be a model ex-felon trying to get on with his life, she sets him up for a fall.
The unwanted sexual tension between Jackie and Clyde, who does not recognize her, is amazing. Jackie hates this attraction in part because it takes her out of her grief and puts her back into the world of the living, and in part because of who Clyde is.
I do seem to remember some comments in articles about this film in The Scotsman about my only major complaint about the film - it's subtitled. So it takes a bit of time for most English speakers to get their ear wrapped around Scots accents, I found the titles distracting and thought there was no need for this in "Red Road." Of course, I had a friend in elementary school whose parents were Scottish, so maybe I just know how to listen to the accents.
This is a dark, slightly predictable movie, and very human. The plot isn't what deserves the awards, but Dickie and Curran's characters are so familiar the viewer can't help but be caught up in their stories.
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