Film

Dickie, a sexily haggard actress in early middle age, all but burns a hole in the screen as Jackie, a tightly wound woman whose job it is to survey a bank of closed-circuit TV monitors connected to a vast network of cameras distributed throughout the city of Glasgow, and to inform the police of any criminal or suspicious activity she sees. Switches and toggles at her fingertips enable her to track her targets with pans, zooms and cuts from one vantage point to the next. One day she’s startled to recognize a man (Curran) whom (we subsequently learn) she believed was in prison. Instantly obsessed, she dedicates her shifts to tracking his every movement, then begins to stalk him in the flesh, with little regard for her own safety.

Her motives, while clearly vengeful, remain obscure until late in the film, and their revelation is less than entirely satisfying. But first-time director Arnold clearly has talent to burn, eliciting understated but admirably layered performances from her cast and a whole lot of brooding atmosphere from the bleak streets of Glasgow.