jabrbi This is your typical "city dwellers go off to the country and get chased by rural nutter" story. Sadly, it was made 30 years too late to make any sense.We get the "we're lost on these rural roads" shtick. If they're that bad at navigating, why don't they have a GPS satellite navigation system like everybody else.Then we get the English urbanites slagging off the Welsh country dwellers. What a cliché. Please, will writers think of something new.Of course, nobody's mobile phone works. What a surprise! And, of course, we have the insane local with a gun and a knife on a very short fuse. This guy is too bonkers to be out of prison or an insane asylum. And where does the guy get a gun from? This is Wales in 2010. The gun laws don't allow people to have a gun like this guy does, not when he carries it about openly.Don't forget another obligatory cliché; one bump on the rear bumper and the car stops and won't restart.Then there's the cliché of the hunted finding a farmhouse, hoping for sanctuary, only to find that the house belongs to the nutter.Naturally, the nutter is almost invulnerable. Boy can he take a beating. And another beating. And another.I could go on, but you get the idea. You could probably name a few clichés of your own and there's a very good chance you'd see those clichés in this film.One final cliché is that the story is being told in retrospect by a survivor to a police officer who doesn't believe him. But a lot of what we see on screen happens when the survivor isn't present. So how does anybody know that those events took place? And, although there is the disbelieved survivor, there are other witnesses who can confirm part of the story and identify the mad man - case closed.If any of this happened 30 years ago it would seem new-ish. Now, it's just one sad old cliché after another. So disappointing.Not a lot of money was spent making this film. At least, I hope not a lot of money was spent because it doesn't look like it cost more than £50 and a six-pack to make. Overall, though, a lot is done with a little money, but there are two BIG problems; 1) The camera man looks like he has Parkinsons disease and makes much of the film unwatchable, 2) The night scenes are filmed with a lot of off-screen white light to show the actors and action. The problem with the night light is that the torch the nutter is using doesn't properly delineate what the nutter can and cannot see. So, when you have the usual situation of the hunted hiding beneath a tree trunk and the nutter right next to them, you can't see what the torch is illuminating. Instead, you can see everything. That just doesn't work.Another problem with the lighting is that, once the hunted arrive at the farm house, it's impossible to tell what time of day it is. There's an odd black and white filter that is used which suggests that it's very early morning with an overcast sky, but then some shots look like it's meant to be night but the cameraman is using those day/night filters you used to see in the 1970's and before when they'd film during the day and use the filter to pretend it's deepest night. But when the action is taking place in the farm barn, it's clear that it's daylight outside. It just confuses the viewer and makes it difficult to understand the timing of events.The raison d'etre of the nutter is that he hates foreigners from the city but, at one point, he shoots a complete stranger with no indication is he's a local or not. Just how he planned to cover up that murder is never explained.By the time you're near the end of the film everything has stopped making sense. If this was America, a la Deliverance, you might be able to believe the plot, but not in rural Wales. And nobody in the UK is so ignorant of how police procedure works that they wouldn't know what the final twist was going to be.At the end of the film, there are too many lose ends to believe the events, and those lose ends will result in the truth being revealed. So, in the end, the actions of at least two people in the film make no sense whatsoever, and that just breaks the whole film apart.I know lots of people say don't watch this or that film on this site, and I try to avoid using the cliché, but this time it's about the best you can say about this film - avoid at all costs.

trashgang The British Deliverance it is called, in some way I agree. But I was left with a hunger here. It never becomes rather brutal or messy. There are of course tough situations but some things are done off-camera due the shoe-string budget. The story itself you have seen a thousand times.When 3 friends go to Wales for business they come across William Parry (David Schofield). He's a bit of a weirdo were even the locals are afraid of. But when the 3 friends go to the local pub guess who's coming in for a drink. Parry of course. When he's out for trouble one of the friends call him a w*nker and from there on they are in deep trouble. Survive or die. But it also bring in the shaky camera and it annoyed me sometimes. It isn't that bad at all but rather low on blood except for the final I have seen better UK flicks concerning such stories. The acting was okay and the language for outsiders is sometimes hard to understand. The title refers to the place the friends wanted to go but never got there due William. As this was Chris Crow's first attempt I can dig it but I do understand that some will be left with a bitter feeling.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

chaugnurfaugn-269-83012 Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes comes to Wales with outlandish and unlikely consequences with only a few redeeming features.The plot is as basic as it comes. A group of little Englanders head to Wales for some reason. Something about the lead role, Sean, requiring the help of a dodgy wheeler dealer to save his ailing business. To be honest, the reason is peripheral, barely explored and fairly pointless.On the way to their holiday spot in the depths of the Welsh countryside the English group encounter local psychopath Bill and things progress from there. The Devil's Bridge in the title is a local landmark which the lads visit for less than one minute of the film. Thereafter it is never mentioned nor featured again, rendering the title as pointless as much of the pre-violence plot.If there is a message here it's ambiguous. I suspect there is one, however, since much of the senseless violence centres around Welsh nationalism and looks suspiciously indulgent coming from Cardiff born writer/director Chris Crow. Whatever the underlying subtext, the resulting movie is an ugly mish mash with little distinction between villain and victim. Certainly too little for us to give a damn who goes under the knife and who doesn't.The characters are one dimensional, but uncomfortably true to life. It may be for this reason that I, an Englishman with a close Welsh heritage, found the whole thing to be too grim and gritty to be anything other than disturbing. For a US audience the change of locale and the perpetuated stereotype of Brits as backwards, brainless and nationalistic thugs will probably make for a fun ride, though I doubt there's enough gore to satisfy the usual crowd.In the end, this is little more than a redneck-gone-mad slasher plucked out of the southern states and dropped into the backwaters of Wales.

Paul Browne For the most part, this is a pretty good film.It's quite apparent that the picture was made on a shoe-string but let us not worry, because the film crew use what little they have to keep you gripped.Playing on many familiar strangers-in-a-strange-town themes, Devil's Bridge is menacing, gritty & dark. Just how you want it.There were moments (especially the ending) I figured were not thought-out as well as can be, but it doesn't matter because for 90 minutes the 3 main actors plus villain do a fantastic job of cat n mouse. As the film rolled on, each actor seemed to grow more & more comfortable within their role, at times, too believable especially for the deranged, psychotic farmer.No one-liners or Tarantino-style-rip-off speeches, just a pretty good parable painting a picture of very bad timing for three 30-something men with no respect for strangers.I doubt you'd be disappointed.