The phone-driven drama of Locke (2013), the vehicle-focused thrills of Wheelman (2017), the neo-noir anxiety of Uncut Gems (2019). One could draw parallels between Stephen Fingleton’s latest and a number of films from the last decade, yet this Irish thriller still manages to carve its own path. Nightride is a whirlwind of desperation, schemes and consequences, leveraging an unwavering camera for suspense and drama.
Releases like One Shot and Boiling Point kept the single-take film alive and thriving last year, and Fingleton brings that approach into a single night’s race across midnight Belfast. Like the aforementioned Locke, the camera is often locked down and peering directly into the protagonist’s face for most of the runtime, so it’s an immense positive that Moe Dunford is riveting in the lead role of drug dealer Budge. His one last job to finally escape his criminal lifestyle and go straight with an auto body shop unfolds exactly as one last jobs usually do in movies: a panicked rush through the streets, as a plan to borrow money from a psychopathic loan shark for a lucrative cocaine deal is upended by a tail, a missing shipment and other ever-compounding complications, all packed into a real-time 97 minutes.
With his original buyer persona non grata, Budge hurriedly assembles a new plan on the fly, gradually drawing friends and a girlfriend into his deadly orbit. Granted, most of this is done through harried exasperated phone calls, with some castmates only ever existing as menacing voices on the other end. It’s a testament to Dunford that he sells the chess match between those often unseen characters: who’s a threat, who’s an ally, who can be placated with a silver tongue and promises, all through his rugged expression and all-business tone.
Nightride’s pace is propelled by that exhausted lead performance, as driven by its escalating calls as by the constant driving through Belfast’s dark streets. That pattern of call, reaction, another call, repeat does grow repetitive as the film progresses, even as Budge’s verbal back-and-forth escalates to face-to-face meets and violent encounters. The distant stakes and detached characters build more anticipation than tension, waiting for the cycle of phone calls and action to snap and consequences to hit closer to home. When those moments do arrive, they can’t help but seem too little too late to amplify Nightride’s intensity.
Perhaps it’s telling that the most gripping scene in Nightride is its most unscripted moment, as a cop pulls over Budge during the middle of the film’s most urgent stretch. Suddenly the crime thriller suspense is literally at the driver-side window, unfolding with naturalistic immediacy while we watch Budge attempt to talk his way out of the stop. It’s a refreshing and effective sequence that solidifies Dunford as Nightride’s greatest asset.
Fingleton’s 2015 debut The Survivalist stripped the post-apocalyptic thriller down to stark endurance and cold wary relationships, and despite the change in period and setting, Nightride evokes similar vibes. Propelled by an unwavering camera and cunning lead, this exhausting distant thriller is urgent, tense and rote in equal measure.
Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media
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