Which came first: the short film or the feature? Either way, there’s a grander scheme to Jonathan and Josh Baker’s directorial debut than can be contained within either a fourteen nor hundred minute runtime. Based on the brothers’ own 2014 mini movie Bag Man, Kin expands the mythos of that first outing by answering and posing questions along the way. While a box office drubbing for the film stateside makes further exploration of the story unlikely, a future here isn’t an entirely unwelcome prospect.
Filmed three years ago but only released this October, Waiting For You is a whisper of a drama and feels long at an hour and a half. Directed by feature first timer Charles Garrad, the film is well cast, competently produced and nicely shot but comes across as far too slight to register in any meaningful or memorable way.
True Scotsman and genre maestro David Mackenzie was always going to produce a more measured take on the historic Scottish fight for independence than Mel ‘Braveheart’ Gibson. It comes as no surprise then that Mackenzie’s tale of love and war is as stark as it is occasionally syrupy and much more politically dense than Gibson’s Oscar-winning epic.
The Film Blog 