Scotland’s Black Camel Pictures held the world premiere of their second film, Legacy, at the Glasgow Film Festival on the 28th Feburary and closed this years festival on a high note. Starring The Wire’s Idris Elba, the film somehow used Dumfries and Galloway as a decoy for New York (surely a first) to portray a Black Ops soldier locked in his room, suffering a mental breakdown and reliving his painful past through gratuitous flashbacks.
It got a great reception, and not just for Elba’s acting, which was a big draw for a lot of fans, but for the feature directorial debut of young Nigerian-English filmmaker Thomas Akimi. It was the strength of Legacy’s script that originally drew Elba to the project.
While the film may seem wide in scope, in reality the budget was miniscule and the main reason for its high profile (it recently closed the Glasgow Film Festival) is Elba. The breakout star of HBO’s peerless drama, he was the one that secured the headlines as well as passing the script onto former Baltimore resident Clarke Peters, who played the inimitable Lester Freamon.
The film proved to be worthy of Elba’s dedication. At once a thrilling suspense film and a psychological study, it is the performance of the hulking lead that gives the film its emotional weight. And thank god he rises to the occasion, as 90% of the film takes place in his small apartment as his mind begins to deteriorate.
The apartment is shot with a tight claustrophobic eye with gloomy lighting adding to the sense of foreboding and uncertainty. The only error in the mood is the presence of a narrator, whose job is clearly to blur the lines between reality and fiction but only succeeds in confusing the audience.
But this is a small quibble when compared with the rest of the film. Ikimi proves to be a confident director who was savvy enough to rest the film on the shoulders of one of the great new acting talents to emerge from the UK in years.
Check out the trailer below and catch it wherever you can:
