Mesmerising leads Hassan Najib and Elena Rivers play a pair of young hotel workers who carry out high-end robberies in this oddly unconvincing story
It’s not fair to critics who want to avoid spoilers but there’s a twist at the end of this romance-focused crime thriller that partly explains why everything that has come before has been so oddly stilted, unconvincing and thinly sketched out. Presumably, writer-director Felix Mackenzie was hoping to create a fairytale-like atmosphere but with a present-day London setting.
We’re supposed to feel enchanted by the tale of Lucan (Hassan Najib) and Alice (Elena Rivers), two crazy young kids pulling off heists while working day jobs as a bell boy and chambermaid, respectively, in a small hotel. But most viewers will just wonder why their high jinks are so incredibly unconvincing, why they trust their criminal mastermind handlers to show up with escape cars at exactly the moment needed, and why they live in a flat that looks as if it was hired on the cheap off Airbnb with practically nothing in the cupboards. Also, why does Alice walk out of her house wearing nothing but a skintight knit dress with no handbag or even a coat? Clearly, her mother (Amanda Abbington) brought her up to expect the entire world would be centrally heated. At least for most of the time she has sensible shoes on.
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