BEAST OF BURDEN

US, 2018, 89 minutes, Colour.
Daniel Radcliffe, Grace Gummer, Pablo Schreiber, Robert Wisdom.
Directed by Jesper Ganslandt.

A beast of burden tends to be a lowly lonely animal bearing at times unbearable loads. So, an apt image for the central character in this film.

However, it is not a film that could be recommended for general viewing. Rather, it is a curiosity item in the career of Daniel Radcliffe. There are some scenes with Meryl Streep’s daughter, Grace Gummer, and Pablo Schreiber.

An IMDb synopsis: Sean Haggerty only has an hour to deliver his illegal cargo. An hour to reassure a drug cartel, a hitman, and the DEA that nothing is wrong. An hour to make sure his wife survives. And he must do it all from the cockpit of his Cessna.

Which means then that Daniel Radcliffe spends most of the time in the cockpit. It is not as if something parallel cannot be an effective film – think, particularly, the British film Locke, all in the front seat of the car with Tom Hardy, or Buried with Reynolds, buried alive in a coffin, or Colin Farrell being menaced in Phone Booth.

However, the cockpit is dark, it is night, it is dangerous. Daniel Radcliffe seems to do his desperate best – but gets an opportunity for some straightforward acting in a few flashbacks which concern his wife and her illness, agents, hitmen, the DEA.

Somehow or other, most audiences will not be engaged with characters or situations – and, if watching on television or download, there will be many temptations to press the Fast Forward.