When fugitive Raoul Moat went on a shotgun-toting rampage round the North-East in the summer of 2010, a media frenzy erupted – assuming new lurid hues when addled ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne, aka Gazza, turned up for a blokey chat with him mid-standoff, clutching cans of lager, some chicken, and two fishing rods (he was turned away by the police, of course). The whole thing seemed too bizarre, too inexplicable to take entirely seriously, though the casualties were very real.
Incisive writer-director Robert Icke’s take on the story lands like a glass of cold water, thrown into our collective faces. Bracing. A belated antidote to all that hysteria. But somehow it lacks Icke’s usual ability to winnow complex source material into one, coherent message.
