Quality Indigo Review

Quality Indigo

Having just watched the Gritty, London set crime thriller ‘Quality Indigo’ by Jaspreet Grewal I felt compelled to write a feature on the movie and those involved in making it. Being a big fan of the more independent style of filmmaking and less mainstream movies than those that flood the market today I personally found Quality Indigo to be one of the most interesting and well made films I have had the pleasure of reviewing in a long time.

The film begins with Don Paice crashing into depression after wife Angie is catastrophically murdered in an arms deal gone sour, in Rainham, London. Retreating to their native Essex, Paice’s crew duly serves revenge on the perpetrators but that

only momentarily placates the crime king-pin, as he realises that he has virtually nothing left to live for without the spiritual connection of his darling wife.

Paice tells faithful right-hand man Charlie Harley to engage the services of legendary hitman ‘The Sandman’ … “He’s been putting people to sleep for years now”… Sandman is given the whole fee upfront to KILL Paice - no matter how desperate he may later get to change his mind. The depression now seems a bottomless pit…
However, when Paice is told that Angie uttered the name of his long lost son ‘Terry Mallstrom’, on her deathbed, he retracts his request. The Sandman though refuses the offer of retracting the job - even if Paice waives any fee refund.

With Paice desperate to find Mallstrom, Sandman desperate to carry out his vow, and a second assassin - hired by Paice to ‘neutralise’ The Sandman - also on the prowl, things become chaotic and dangerous. With the Met Police also on the trail of Paice’s probation violating second assassin, the streets of London are about to catch fire!

Background

Quality Indigo was financed on the back of Give and Take, and Take’s success and was conceived by writer-director Jaspreet Grewal only four months before production began: “I knew that I wanted to revisit the crime genre because it’s definitely my favourite, but for a while I didn’t know what to do with this character that I had created called ‘Don Paice’. I realised I wanted to explore mortality because of quite an intense experience that happened in my personal life and that’s when I decided to bring Paice’s grim-reaper to life in the form of ‘The Sandman’. I wrote this script fast and literally within 7 months we were shooting it.”

Interview (Interview and words by Jennifer Grant)

But why should the 24 year-old writer-director be having a mid-life crisis? Don Paice is estimated to be around 50 in this film and (appearing in virtually every scene) he is the closest thing to being the writer’s alter-ego in the piece: “I wouldn’t say ‘I am Don Paice’ but I certainly understand him intimately. He’s actually having a set of crisis’ that most of us wrestle with everyday, albeit in a slightly more subconscious, secondary or laidback way…Questions about God, life after death, all those things. These are universal, so I wasn’t worried about making this wise-guy so old. I certainly wasn’t going to make him a young, hip, pretty boy for the sake of a few cheap sales. Frank (Jakeman) gives Paice so much charisma and depth that I think any adult would engage with and enjoy this movie.”

With a limited budget of only 100,000 UK Pounds, how difficult was it to get the nearly 2-hour epic made? Grewal says the answer is simple: “We did what all low budgeters do - cut corners.”
“Everyone believed in the script and everyone worked for expenses - that sort of thing. We stole some street scenes completely guerilla style and got good deals on some others. A couple of the locations used were actually houses and flats that belonged to family and friends so we wrote the script keeping this in mind - to keep costs down.”
Why shoot on a Digital Video format having shot Give and Take, and Take on 16mm?
“Budgetary reasons again, mainly. But also because I knew that we could achieve things in low light areas, with our video equipment, that film could not achieve. I’m a massive fan of film, and will shoot on it at every opportunity, but even with a fast, high quality stock I knew that we wouldn’t be able to achieve the look I was after for certain important night scenes. Much of this film, which I would class as neo-noir, is shot at nighttime - inspired by everything from Little Caesar and The Maltese Falcon to Heat and Bladerunner - so we tried to get a phantasmagoric night look, while keeping costs down.”

What Enchanted Entertainment Thought
Here at Enchanted Entertainment we receive a vast amount of screener and promo discs for various movies sent to us for review, so naturally we didn’t really expect anything particularly different from Quality Indigo. However, after watching it I was surprised to find that not only was this film extremely well made, but I can also honestly say I found myself drawn into the plotline and was able to identify with the individual characters with ease, each of whom showed depth and great acting ability. I was especially taken in by Frank Jakeman who played the main character Don Paice. His performance was believable and dramatic enough to rival any of the big name actors on our cinema screens this year and I’m pleased to see that he has recently hit our TV screens in an episode of ‘The Bill’ which I’m sure will only lead to even bigger and better things in the future. Adam Leese (Charley) also gave a fantastic performance and is someone I’d bet on going a long way in the entertainment industry.

In short, I would highly recommend this film to movie fans everywhere; comparable to classics such as ‘The long good Friday’ and ‘Heat’ it is a powerful, gutsy movie that isn’t afraid to push the boundaries of filmmaking to achieve great results. Writer and Director Jaspreet Grewal certainly has a lot to be proud of.

Links

BUY Quality Indigo here: - http://www.indieflix.com
Quality Indigo’s Myspace Page & Trailer can be found here:-www.MySpace.com/qualityindigo
You can also find out more about Quality Indigo and director Jaspreet Grewal here:- http://www.troubledchildrenfilms.com

Enchanted Entertainment gives Quality Indigo Rating:

Format: DV
Year of production: 2005
Running time: 120 mins
Director: Jaspreet Grewal
Producer: Amarjit Grewal
Executive/Co-Producer: Surjit Mann
Editor: Terrance Forster
Screenwriter: Jaspreet Grewal
Director of Photography: Sebastian Dassler
Sound: Jonathan Kimble
Music: Kee Lewis
Principal Cast: Frank Jakeman, Michael Brand, Dean Holley, Adam Leese, Paul Marc Davis, Cameron Jack and Tom Wontner
Production Company:
Troubled Children Films Limited

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