Cast Highlights: Martin Compston Eddie Marsan

Character: Alice Creed
Production Status: On DVD
Release Date: April 30, 2010 (UK)
Director: J Blakeson
Writers: J Blakeson
Genre: Thriller
MPAA Rating: n/a

Plot Outline:
Two men – one in his twenties, the other nearer forty, both intensely focused on the task at hand – line the inside of a transit van with plastic. Shopping, they buy a drill, a mattress and other supplies. In a small flat they assemble a bed for the mattress and staple foam insulation and board to the walls and windows of a bedroom. Then, their meticulous preparations complete, they kidnap a young woman. They drag her from the street into the back of the van and, with a bag over her head and ball gag in her mouth, take her back to the flat, tying her to the bed in the room they have converted into a prison cell.

The kidnappers are Danny (Martin Compston) and Vic (Eddie Marsan), two ex-cons planning to make a mint on the ransom for the young woman. The younger, nervier of the two, Danny defers to the more experienced Vic, who acts with a steely conviction. Their hostage is Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton), daughter of a rich businessman, chosen by Vic and Danny as their passport to a better life. Terrified and immobile at first, it soon becomes clear that Alice isn’t about to let her captors use her as capital without a fight. As determined to escape as Vic and Danny are to succeed, Alice enters into a battle of wills which strains the already fractious relationship between the two men. As the deadline for the exchange draws nearer, all three are brought close to breaking point, with Vic and Danny’s foolproof plan descending into a desperate struggle for survival.

A taut, emotionally intense thriller, the debut feature from writer-director J Blakeson eschews genre convention, generating tension from the sexual and psychological ties that bind captive to captors. Produced by Adrian Sturges (The Escapist), the film stars Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Prince of Persia), Eddie Marsan (Happy Go Lucky, Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Compston (Sweet Sixteen, Red Road).

Gemma’s Role:
Gemma Arterton plays rich girl Alice Creed. Although Alice is terrorized by the plight she wakes up to, her feral intelligence takes over and shifts the balance of power again.

“A lot of people cautioned me against doing it because it is tough stuff. But when I met J, he reassured me that he was going to cast it properly and that it could be a brilliant, risky film.”

“It’s funny, I thought I would start out making smaller films like Alice Creed then do the bigger films, but it worked out the other way,” she says. “This is really hard work. This is why I do this job: the chance to really stretch yourself, to do something you don’t know you can do. I mean, with that other stuff, most girls could strut their stuff through those.”

From the Photo Gallery:

Cast and Crew Quotes:
• “Gemma Arterton only had a short gap between filming two huge movies — Prince of Persia and Clash of the Titans — which luckily coincided with our schedule. She was the first person to read for any role and about twenty seconds into her audition I was thinking ‘let’s hire her now. Right now.’ She was phenomenal.”
– J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed director)

• “I don’t doubt she’s going to cope with it all brilliantly,” says J Blakeson, novice writer-director of the forthcoming The Disappearance Of Alice Creed, in which Gemma takes the title role. “She’s got a strong personality and a lot of faith in herself. I can’t see her getting mangled up in the machine.”
– J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed director)

• “I think the world’s going to hear a lot more from Gemma in the next five or ten years,” says Blakeson. “If you only know her as the good-looking girl in St. Trinian’s and the Bond movie, you might dismiss her as just another pretty face. But she’s far beyond that. I think she’s going to be right up there with the best of her generation.”
– J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed director)