Charlie Zone

Avery (Glen Gould) is a man with a dark past and a bleak future. A First Nations dockworker and part-time pro street fighter, he is stricken by past tragedy and trapped in a lonely present. He’s a strong man, but too self-loathing to use his strength for anything good. Chance intervenes when he’s contracted to rescue a drug addict from her life of degradation.

Jan (Amanda Crew) is living in a squalid shooting gallery, in love with her dealer Tal (Pasha Ebrahimi). Avery’s orders are simple: kidnap her and return her to her estranged parents. His actions will unleash a bloody mess of murder, torture and betrayal; this chaos involves the heartbroken and vengeful Tal, a vicious gang of bikers, two contract killers and, in a ghastly revelation, a powerful man with some horrifying sexual desires.

This gripping and haunting thriller combines mystery, agonizing suspense and extreme moral urgency. The plot turns are shocking, and each is expertly orchestrated: the answer to one mystery reveals another crisis, and the suspense and terror increase as we learn more. There are heroes and villains here, but the line isn’t always clear, and the empathy is spread evenly without the film losing its sense of right and wrong. It’s rare that we get a thriller in which suspense, bloodshed and resonant humanity are so expertly combined.