North Sea Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Jamie Childs – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

When ex-British army mercenary Jack Dawson – a.k.a. Jackdaw – retrieves a package from the North Sea for a client, things go horribly wrong, forcing him to go through the North East in search of answers – British action thriller is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 26th

Jackdaw is the nickname for Jack Dawson (Oliver Jackson-Cohen from Emily Frances O’Connor, 2022; The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021; The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannel, 2020), an ex-army mercenary who looks after his down syndrome brother Simon (Leon Harrop). A call comes in to his answering machine for what appears to be a routine job picking up a package from the coastal waters of the North Sea, and it pays well, so might provide the much-needed opportunity for the two brothers to improve their lot. Jack is good at what he does, but the job proves to be far less routine than stated, as he finds himself first the quarry of a pursuit then discovers his brother has been kidnapped. In search of answers, he sets off on visiting a trail of contacts across the underworld of the North of England.… Read the rest

The Burning Sea
(Nordsjøen)

Director – John Andreas Andersen – 2022 – Norway – Cert. 12 – 104m

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An underwater technician attempts to rescue her lover who is trapped and probably dead on an oil rig amidst impending ecological disaster – out on digital on Monday, May 30th

The Norwegian title translates literally as North Sea, so renaming the film The Burning Sea makes it sound more dramatic and ups the ante considerably. That increased selling point comes at a price, though. Instead of an oil rig disaster movie, you’re now expecting a sea on fire movie which doesn’t happen ’til the last reel. Still, director Andersen’s films include the impressive disaster movie The Quake (2018) while the writing team of Harald Rosenløw-Eeg (The Quake, 2018; The Wave, Roar Uthaug, 2015) and Lars Gudmestad (Headhunters, Morten Tyldum, 2011) looks promising enough. Unlike those films, however, this one lapses fairly quickly into cliché.

It spends its first 10 minutes largely on romantic drama with Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp from the wonderful Ninjababy, Yngvild Sve Flikke, 2021) content to be living her life with lover Stian (Henrik Bjelland) and his pre-teen son Odin (Nils Elias Olsen) at a distance rather than living together permanently with them.… Read the rest