A Paisley filmmaker says his award-winning movie has helped put Renfrewshire and the Scottish film industry “in the international spotlight”.
The success of Infiltrated has prompted plans for a Scottish series of films to go toe-to-toe with blockbuster franchise James Bond.
Tam Toye – a producer, scriptwriter and actor – is the man behind Infiltrated, which tells the story of Sergeant Barry Clark, a British Army soldier falsely accused of war crimes in Bosnia.
Barry is subsequently recalled to Military Intelligence and is sent undercover to infiltrate and destroy the organisation run by the kingpin of organised crime in Scotland.
The action movie was awarded best low-budget film at the Los Angeles Motion Picture Festival in 2021 and Tam says that, since then, “sales of the film just get better all the time”.
Following the film festival success, Infiltrated was picked up by streaming giant Amazon Prime Video.
It features well-known landmarks, such as the former Coats Memorial Church, Lochwinnoch’s Muirshiel Country Park, Paisley Town Hall, the University of the West of Scotland campus and the Wynd Centre.
Tam described the movie as a “Renfrewshire travelogue” and added: “We have received literally hundreds of emails asking where the scenes were filmed. The movie’s iconic, panoramic closing shot of the Paisley skyline dominated by the imposing spire of Coats’ Memorial Church caught the eye of people in four continents.”
The film was nearly a decade in the making. Tam spent years trying to get the project off the ground and eventually brought fellow Buddie and scriptwriter Pat Boyd on board to help bring it together.
The Paisley-born duo were delighted to feature their home town in so many of the shots.
“There are lots of Renfrewshire scenes throughout the entire movie,” said Pat, who also worked with Tam on movies such as Night is Day and Amazon TV series Cops and Monsters.
“We wanted to film predominantly in Paisley and Renfrewshire while also taking in places in Glasgow and Greenock.
“It was fantastic for us to show Paisley in such a positive light.
“We were so grateful to all the people in Renfrewshire who helped us when we were filming by making their spaces available to us.”
Archie Allison, from Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, would later join the project as director.
Tam hopes the success of Infiltrated will lead to more productions – eventually creating a series to “rival the James Bond franchise”.
He continued: “The film has helicopters, executive private jets, tanks and military vehicles, speedboats, flashy gangsters in gold Rolls-Royce limousines and all the elements you would find in a big budget blockbuster.
“We crafted a movie in a commercial genre, sold it to a huge, international distributor for worldwide release, and won an award at a US film festival, and we believe that the best is yet to come.”
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