Travellers

Can the appetite for straight-to-video tat sustain an unending flow of British bare-knuckle boxing flicks? This low-budget offering tries to have it both ways by presenting travellers as scary, caravan-dwelling folk devils before revealing a more complex reality. There’s just enough ambition on display for writer-director-cinematographer Kris McManus’s film to scrape by on the benefit of the doubt, but distinctly variable work from cast and crew alike seriously limits its appeal.

Giving centre-stage to deeply unappealing city types on a lads-only adventure break is a major stumbling block: it’s hard to care whether financial whizz Dan (Alex Edwards), blokey Chris (Shane Sweeney) or over-compensating wimp Andy (Tom Geoffrey) will survive the ordeal they create for themselves after idiotically daubing ‘Piky scum’ (sic) on an abandoned mobile dwelling – so setting in motion a cavalcade of bloodshed when its owners return.

As simple exploitation fare, this barely works since the intermittent carnage never gathers much momentum – and a big, bare-knuckle set piece is dismayingly tame. Dean Jagger’s performance is the strongest suit: he convinces as a ferocious traveller pugilist while making good on the script’s attempts at nuanced characterisation. Jagger looks set for better things, though director McManus still has to learn that you can’t fix dull scenes just by intercutting them – and, indeed, that a Charley Boorman cameo, flagging up overreaching comparisons to his dear old dad’s ‘Deliverance’, is far from advisable in the circumstances.