Serve Cold

• Niki Boyle
• 5 August 2012

This article is from 2012.

A nasty dramatic thriller with a patchy script

Joy (Elaine McKergow) stands on a bridge, contemplating the river below and swigging a bottle of red wine. Grace (Nicola Clark) is an on-duty prostitute, who walks by to make sure Joy isn’t thinking of jumping in. After paying for Grace’s services for the night, Joy makes a proposition: she’ll help Grace escape her abusive pimp if Grace helps her exact revenge on her recent ex-boyfriend.

The script’s major fault is in trying too hard to make the women appear polar opposites: while Clark’s realistic prozzie is god-fearing, sexually active and full ae the Glesga patter, McKergow’s atheistic doctor is a little too studied in her cut-glass BBC Scotland enunciation, and uses terms like ‘front bottom’ instead of ‘vagina’ (which jars against her medical profession).

That aside, Clark’s performance is fantastic, and the plot’s decidedly nasty streak makes it much more intriguing that your average Strangers on a Train knock-off. Some judicious tweaks and this could be a devious dramatic thriller.

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