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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Peter Bradshaw

Control review - Kevin Spacey’s sarky GPS wants to kill the home secretary for sleeping with the PM

‘She has lost control of her car – and her life’ … Lauren Metcalfe as Home Secretary Stella Simmons in Control.
‘She has lost control of her car – and her life’ … Lauren Metcalfe as Home Secretary Stella Simmons in Control. Photograph: YouTube

Kevin Spacey’s redemptive journey of uncancelling steps another millimetre forwards, or sideways, with his somewhat bizarre new role in this low-budget British indie in which, as a disembodied voice, he plays the implacable punisher of other people’s sexual misdemeanours.

It’s actually a decent idea for a single location cat-and-mouse thriller set in a car – similar to, actually maybe better than the idea behind the recent Liam Neeson thriller Retribution. And it was a smart entrepreneurial idea to create a role which Spacey could conveniently record in a studio anywhere in the world. Spacey’s silky, sulky voice saves the film from disaster, just slightly, although there’s nothing he can do about the terribly clunky direction and torpid line-readings from other people.

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