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The Responder

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The Responder

Name: The Responder
Director: Phil Barantini
Genre: Crime/detective, Drama, Thriller
Released: 2022
Cast: Martin Freeman, Mark Womack, Warren Brown

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2022

Crime/detective
Drama

Summary

Crime drama starring Martin Freeman as a police response officer struggling with financial commitments, family problems and mental health issues

IMDB

Review

David Butcher

The premise for this Martin Freeman drama doesn’t sound like much. It’s the story of a police offi cer in Liverpool who struggles with the pressures of the job and has shady relationships with people on the wrong side of the law. Pitch that to a television executive and you might get short shrift. But in practice it’s powerful stuff, an unsettling tale written by Tony Shumacher — himself a former policeman — with such a pained performance by Freeman that it makes you want to hug the next copper you see and tell them that everything will be OK.

Freeman plays Chris Carson, an urgent response officer with a malaise that psychotherapy hasn’t cured. “We both know I’m not fixed…the job has ruined me,” he says, and in each scene he looks as tightly wound as a roll of banknotes. Then an old associate, a drug dealer called Carl Sweeney (Ian Hart, being nicely scary), demands a favour that sets Chris’s moral compass spinning.

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7.5/10