Director: Al Campbell
146 minutes (15) 2020
Acorn DVD
Rating: 7/10
Review by Christopher Geary
“Did you lie to
me... about the end of the world?” With a list of things to do, Kim Noakes (Maisie
Williams, Game Of Thrones, The New
Mutants) leaves home in Scotland to visit a gangster named Jimmy (Sean
Pertwee, Gotham), who murdered her father.
Although she is immature, Kim is not a typical runaway girl, as dangerous Jimmy
soon learns when she arrives to kill him. Pursued by two bickering brothers
that she met in a pub, highly skilled but innocent Kim plans for the atomic
apocalypse following a cruel prank. Her hard-boiled and paranoid mum Tina (Sian
Clifford), attempts a rescue but only succeeds in making a terrible situation
worse. “Gloves and a gun if you want to have fun.” Meanwhile, crooked cop,
Brooks (Jason Flemyng, Pennyworth),
is on the trail of a bagful of stolen cash.
This TV drama series is largely a black comedy that offers a parody of survivalism, and is seemingly inspired by Joe Wright’s Hanna (2011). Rattling along from the start, it keeps up a brisk pace while some telling flashbacks provide necessary exposition. Kim’s group is on a journey to the south coast, where she enjoys fairground rides and plans to scatter her dad’s ashes down at the seaside. Perhaps inevitably, its humorous action builds up to a car chase and a shoot-out, ending with revelations of deception and greed, followed by a suitably ironic tragedy and sudden death.
Two Weeks To Live flits between amusing banter and poignant moments of essentially British culture. Fairy-tale allusions, concerning shock discoveries of outside-world reality, add layers of mystery-genre appeal to a basic road-movie adventure, with crime-thriller aspects. Although half of the supporting cast lapse into TV rom-com clichés, Williams has authentic star qualities and Clifford gives an outstanding performance. Perhaps the moral of this storyline is that any uninitiated protagonist should always make reckless decisions from a position of safety?
