Nightride review – generic Brit-thriller elevated by its one-take conceit

Borrowing liberally from other “real-time” films like Locke and Victoria, Stephen Fingleton’s Nightride is a relatively generic Brit-thriller with the USP that the entire thing takes place in one continuous shot, never letting us escape for a second during the most stressful night of a Belfast gangster’s life. It’s an impressive gambit, but the technical work here does often have to elevate an otherwise pedestrian script that doesn’t quite have the punch or urgency of its recent contemporaries.

The criminal in question is mid-tier drug-dealer Budge (Moe Dunford), looking to finally get out from Belfast’s seedy underbelly with one last job that will make him the money he needs to buy an auto body shop and go straight. His plan is a convoluted one, involving borrowing £100k from one notoriously psychotic mobster in the hope that he can turn it into £200k through two separate major deals before the night is out and pay back the first guy before the first debt get dangerous. Of course, it all goes wrong, and Budge has to think quickly to come up with a scheme that will let him, his business partner, and his girlfriend all make it to the morning in one piece.

Most of the action takes place inside Budge’s car, so we mostly hear about the plot developments rather than actually see them – Budge is relying on a huge number of outside forces to go his way, so he’s always on the phone. Dunford gives a committed performance, but these extended driving sequences can’t help but draw comparisons to Steven Knight’s Locke, and Nightride lacks the strength of that film’s writing and the sheer presence of Tom Hardy to keep things compelling.

Things get more exciting whenever Budge is on foot, which is also the time that Fingleton’s single-take conceit is at its most impressive – there’s no digital trickery here à la 1917, so the preparation must have been arduous. There is also one genuinely extraordinary moment when Dunford is actually pulled over by the real Belfast police (COVID masks covering blurred-out faces), dealing with a driving license check in character, a serendipitous jolt of adrenaline that had me on a knife-edge.

But the really special stuff like this is just a little too rare, and Nightride’s plot does go round in circles a bit, with a few scenes that really don’t ring true – why, for example, doesn’t Budge, a dealer who makes six-figure buys and employs his own henchmen, have a gun? Fingleton keeps reminding us of the real-time countdown to Budge’s deadline of midnight, but you only really feel this urgency when he gets out of his car and the camera has to move as frantically as him, and the finale itself has some really clunky lines from first-time screenwriter Ben Conway.

The ambition on display in Nightride is commendable, and we genuinely need more British and Irish films unafraid to experiment with their limited budgets. The stylistic swagger often on display here is great to see, even if you do end up wishing the parts added up to a more satisfying whole.

Nightride is released on Netflix on 4 March.