‘Nightride’: Dublin Review

Dir. Stephen Fingleton. UK. 2021. 97 mins.

The nascent career of Northern Irish director Stephen Fingleton (2015’s award-winning The Survivalist) stalled abruptly after a much-publicised court case (in which he was acquitted). His second feature is thus not what would have been expected as a progression in 2016, and instead is a calling-card comeback of sorts. Look at me, it shouts: see what I can conjure out of almost nothing. Set almost entirely in a car in Belfast over the course of one night, it’s a heist tribute to Locke executed with far narrower narrative strokes and even less budget.

Another chance for Fingleton to remind audiences of what he can do.

Writer Ben Conway — Nightride is billed as a Conway/Fingleton film - is clearly a devotee of the crime genre and the film sets its stall with a Pulp Fiction-y dialogue tribute to Michael Mann’s films in an early section. Fingleton puts the always-dependable Moe Dunford in the Tom Hardy driver’s seat and proceeds to deliver a clock-ticking countdown to a drug deal for a man who’s doing one last night on the job before he gets out of the business. It’s a thin broth indeed, but Fingleton approaches it with as much seasoning as he can find. One last gig for Budge (Dunford), another chance for Fingleton to remind audiences of what he can do.

After an appearance in Toronto’s industry selects programme, Nightride debuts at the Dublin Film Festival (it is repped by Pulsar Content). Audiences will sense immediately that they’ve supped from this bowl before, but from a technical perspective, it’s interesting to watch Fingleton set himself the one-shot challenge and try to meet it. DoP David Bird settles on a night-time aesthetic lit by marmalade tones of street lighting. Occasionally you can pick out Belfast landmarks in the background — the cranes of the Harland & Wolff shipyard, the Titanic Museum - but mostly it’s a concrete affair set on streets and in multi-storey car parks. Phil Kieran assembles a hypnotic, EDM-influenced score which glides perfectly with the piece.

The plot is doled out in phone calls from the car and a brief exposition in a hotel room from whence Budge sallies forth on his final night of crime. He has set up a deal to relieve the local Ukrainian drug dealers (ouch) of their stash as they, too, want to get out of the game. He’ll buy it with the help of a quick loan from the much-feared Joe The Nut, sell it on fast, and have £60k in profit the next morning to invest in a body shop with his ‘civilian’ partner. What could go wrong? Everything, of course, as he ticks along on a time bomb. Money has to be delivered within minutes, it’s the last chance to buy the premises, etc etc. Joe The Nut is described as the type of man who ‘puts people under slabs’. No surprise then when Stephen Rea’s voice comes over the speaker.

Apart from the similarity with Locke, this could also be a riff on The Guilty with a man stuck in a box as events play out around him. There are finite ways to play the elements of this story out, and they’ve all been attempted before, so the main variable here is the quality of the ride. Fingleton tries with everything he has to hand to make it an enjoyable one. And Dunford doesn’t fail him, delivering the clench-jawed strongman-with-a-heart of gold performance which would do Jason Statham proud. Nightride doesn’t try to reinvent the (car) wheel, nor does it really pretend to be anything more than it is. Fingleton shows us what he can do, so it’s efficient vehicle in the end. Like the audience, it knows where it is going. It all depends on whether those on board like the cut of its chassis.