Thrillers Three

Hell Drivers was brilliant - if you thought Peckinpah's Convoy was the best trucking movie ever made well you'll be thinking again after seeing this little gem from the 50's. Stanley Baker plays an ex-con who gets a job driving ballast trucks at breakneck speed and finds himself in a deadly competition with the other drivers. Patrick McGoohan stars as Red the psychotic pace man of the crew along with Herbert Lom, Sean Connery and Sid James to name but few. Catch it if you can.


I watched the original Edge of Darkness last year and loved it but the director and producer have returned with a trimmed down Ollywood version starring Mel Gibson and though it's decent enough it isn't a patch on the 80's mini-series. All the main plot points are still there: daughter slaughter, cop dad looking for revenge, enviro/corporate evil exposed, cop dad dies but it's just not given enough time to brew and the ending has little of the excitement or mysticism of the original and opts for cheese instead. Good effort but I'd recommend their first effort over this.

Runaway Jury - Grisham guff but at there's a decent cast in this tale of jury manipulation with Hackman, Cusack and Hoffman taking the leads. Thriller by the numbers though so only for the very bored.