Set in New York City and filmed in Manchester, England, here is a film that aims to play like a feature-length episode of The Wire or The Sopranos. Naturally, that is not an easy target to hit, and the result, while decent enough, falls somewhat short but is still watchable.
Luke Evans plays Adam, a nice guy who made a terrible mistake in his youth: shooting another young man and going to prison for 16 years. His partner, Donna (Stephanie Leonidas), has brought up their son Jimmy to believe his dad simply skipped town and abandoned them, so she’s none too chuffed to find Adam back in the neighbourhood and desperate to reconnect with a now-teenaged Jimmy (Rudy Pankow).
Also displeased to learn of Adam’s return is Eli (Zack Adams), brother of the kid Adam murdered, though Eli’s troubles aren’t limited to past misfortunes: his best mate Mike (Rory Culkin) is planning to run off with his off-on girlfriend Lori (Savannah Steyn), if only they can scrape together enough money somehow to leave New York. Mike’s uncle (Alex Pettyfer) has taken him along on enough drug deals by now; perhaps the solution lies in setting up a big off-the-books score for himself?
You get the picture. It’s a hard knock life. People, they ain’t no good. This tangle of conflicting interests is sketched out plausibly enough, but just as we’ve started to get to know these people it’s time to wrap things up. That’s not because the film is too short – if anything, the pace could use tightening – but because there are so many significant characters that we don’t really get to enough inner lives to be sufficiently invested in how things will turn out. It almost feels like an extended pilot for an unmade TV show.
Culkin’s character is the film’s MVP – the actor manages to find a few different notes to play. He ranges from comic (sloping around dressed like an extra from The Crow; you can only imagine how bad the band he’s in must be), to tragic (he’s clearly destined to get in way over his head), to likable (his rapport with Lori is genuine and seemingly based on actual respect). He’s not the hero, but there’s a tangible sense of inner life there, even if he is kind of an idiot.
In a TV series, you would enjoy seeing what dumb thing he has done this episode. But this isn’t a TV series, and as it stands, 5lbs of Pressure (the title refers to the strength required to pull the trigger of a handgun) falls into the category of a decent rather than particularly great crime movie.
• 5lbs of Pressure is on Prime Video from 22 May.
