Daybreak (2000) Online

Daybreak concerns the lives of Flash (an Edinburgh DJ in real life), Anna, and Jed and the different paths their lives take once they start out as party-happy friends. Giving away more isn't that helpful, but I thought this film portrayed the confusion and alienation of youth well, though the story was fractured and the plot sometimes thin, I thought the acting great and it's always a pleasure to see Jean-Phillipe E'Coffey on screen. Edinburgh by night is a great set for any film, especially one exploring the club scene and the transitions of characters who pass through there. I thought certain narrative trajectories were unexplained, which hindered the film somewhat, but the look and the pacing, the acting and the story itself were compelling and Definitely worth checking out, especially for those wanting a different take on the Scottish club/drug scene than that portrayed by Irvine Welsh.

...I'm sure that this is what was intended with this film but it never quite makes the grade. The video film stock is unsettling at first but easy to get used to and if anything adds a little realism. The use of the club music also works well in the first half of the film and should have been used more. It could have formed an interesting background to the supposed heightened emotion felt by the characters in the remainder of the story.

The three leads are, for all intents and purposes, people you think you could get used to watching on screen, all apparently likable in their own way, but they do not exude any chemistry, especially when playing against each other. Most scenes last far too long and are drawn out with morbid, self-reflexive examinations that would probably almost work with better editing and a faster pace to the film.

It's low budget, sure, but that doesn't have to mean low quality.

In Edinburgh, Jed is a drug dealer who runs a club who's luck finally runs out when he loses the money he owes to Chan. He is also having problems with his girlfriends Anna and the two are drifting apart. Anna meanwhile has befriended a pornographer and is starting to get to know him. Friends with both Jed and Anna, Eve does what she can, but she too has problems of her own.

Why should this film give you hope if you want to make a movie on a shoestring or find that first deal to get a chance to show what you can do? Simply because this movie is awful and the fact that it ever even got made should give anyone hope that your film can get made - if this did then surely anything can be made! The plot here is so fragmented and unfocused that it's a wonder the actual film it was on didn't crumble into ash. There was nothing that could be called a narrative strand and the film seemed to be more about the relationship between the main three. However it falls down badly on this too - not developing the characters and having seemingly random and pointless things happen to them - the event that I thought would be the backbone of the film (the loss of the money) was solved by having a gay collector being a lover of Chan and...oh, hell, I couldn't even follow that bit it was such a mess.

The acting ranges from poor to awful. The guy playing Chan only has a few lines to say but he delivers them like he was reading out loud from something in a foreign language! The rest of the cast are just poor or bad rather than laughable. Bell's narration is flat and deadly while her performance is only slightly better. Purvis doesn't seem to know her character any better than I did and struggles for it, while Flash just puts his acting mode to `geezer' and leaves it at that. None of them manage to develop any sort of character or get to a point where I really understood them, wanted to understand them or even cared what happened to them.

The digital video is not usually a problem for me, even if it makes the film look a bit cheaper. However here the film already felt really cheap and nasty so the video didn't help at all. The director seems to have an art complex and thinks that all manner of shots are artistic and beautiful - it would have worked if the actual film had been worth even one fancy set or frame.

As it is, this film is about as bad and a waste of time as I could have hoped for. I hung in there till the end but I was nearly weeping with joy when the final credits rolled. I wanted to give it a chance but it simply not got better and only managed, much to my disbelief, to get worse with every passing moment!

Saw this film recently on DVD. It was a brave attempt to look at the characters of Jed Eve and Anna's lives in a manner not dissimilar to recent films of Gus Van Sant 'Last Days'and'Elephant,' eschewing drama for atmosphere and the psychology of the mundane. It's a film of how a group of friends whose hedonistic lifestyles are unsustainable and eventually break-up.

The film follows DJ Jed, his girlfriend Anna and their friend Eve through the euphoria and come-down of their hedonistic lifestyles and the comedown as the lose their way and their friendship and take divergent paths.

Experimental in its form the film displays a really interesting take of this life, nuancing of character was good and the edinburgh night looks great. 7/10