A former British serviceman blinded in action loses his guide dog
And that's the plot of this gloomy British drama . Reading the brief summary it's a case of that particularly recent British phenomena known as "Grief whoring" . Ah the good old days of this when young soldiers would be killed in Afghanistan and massed crowds would gather with individuals having a contest to see who could wail the loudest on behalf of a dead person they had never met . I don't want to sound all nasty and cynical but I've always found this a very unhealthy and worst of all hypocritical attitude and one wonders what these people do with their free time now that NATO involvement is over and more crucially the TV cameras are no longer at Wootan Basset ?
Like I said I'll try not to be too cynical and in its favour GREYHAWK doesn't go overboard with tear stained teeth gnashing and other manipulative tricks . Director Mike Pitt and screenwriter Matt Pitt have made a relatively poignant film centered around a rather unsympathetic protagonist .Mal played by Alec Newman and written and played so that Mal never comes across as a victim . Instead he is understandably a bitter and twisted man
Also to be fair to the production team for a film lasting an hour and a half with an absolute threadbare , wafer thin premise everyone has been able to do the very best they can do and the film does have genuine social consciousness about it . The downside is that it also shows the need that if you're making a feature length film you need a strong plot to drive it so as something that would have worked as an excellent short film just becomes an average feature length one
