STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
There is truth in the maxim: if something looks too good to be true it probably is. With it's glossy cover proudly proclaiming it to be from Julian Gilbey, the director of 'Rise of the Footsoldier', there was no reason to suspect that Reckoning Day wouldn't be up to a certain standard that you could expect from Gilbey at least. Except, his previous two films that I know of, Rollin' With the Nines and ROTFS, have both enjoyed cinematic releases while this appears to have arrived straight onto DVD. Which would either be a surefire sign it was a bit iffy, or meant it would be one of those shelved efforts from years ago that have finally seen the light of day because of the director's newfound success, deceitfully tarted up as something new and exciting? Guess which one it turned out to be...
I honestly think Gilbey would have been better off filming this with a home video camera as the result would have looked less cheap and rotten, with the blurry, grainy camera lens being a downside throughout. But it's not nearly as big a problem as the embarrassingly bad acting, the incomprehensible plot, the laughable dialogue, the weak script and terrible action. It all just fails to shoot right from any cylinders, but still can't let up at the end from Gilbey's trademark love of gratuitous, blood splattered violence, here of the man tied to a chair and tortured for info variety, that was to stand him in stead for his, ahem, future films that this early student trash of his showed the early warning signs of.
I wasn't keen on Rise of the Foot Soldier but seeing the sort of garbage Gilbey was actually capable of, it seems an absolute classic in comparison. Please avoid this abomination like the plague. NO STARS