The Last Great Wilderness

Sigma Films | Dir - David Mackenzie | Prod - Gillian Berrie

2K HD | 1.85:1 | Cooke Zooms | 91 mins

Cast - Alastair Mackenzie | Jonny Phillips | Victoria Smurfit | Ewan Stewart | David Hayman

Charlie is on his way to the Scottish Highlands on a mission - to burn down the house of the pop star who ran off with his wife. While en route, Vincent, a quirky gigolo who needs to lay low for sleeping with another man's wife, talks Charlie into giving him a ride out of town. After running out of gas, the two men get stranded at an off-beat motel where they now find themsleves surrounded by all the weirdo residents.

Review - Total Film

A road movie with a difference, The Last Great Wilderness is set in the Scottish Highlands, where mismatched travellers Charlie (Alastair Mackenzie) and Spanish-Cockney Vicente (Jonny Phillips) end up running out of road in the middle of nowhere. Finding shelter in a rundown hotel, they discover a weird bunch of dropouts acting under the influence of a crazed psychotherapist (David Hayman). With a strong sense of absurdity and a complete disregard for audience expectations, Wilderness has an off-kilter edge, heightened by its vaguely familiar cast (plenty of Hamish Macbeth and Monarch Of The Glen regulars) and gritty DV camerawork. It loses its sparkle as the filmmakers ditch the low-budget Wicker Man set-up for something far less disturbing, but rallies aggressively to set up a bloody finale. Overall, it doesn't quite work, but it's good to know that the British film industry can still produce off-centre, original material.