Nobody likes shopping for houses, right? Buying — or in most cases now, renting — a new place is a top five stressful experience, combining deadlines, overly chatty estate agents, and a hell of a lot of money into something that feels more like homework than a step towards your future. Add to thatan ongoing housing crisis, where millions of people are being pushed out of the dream of actually buying a hometo grow old in, and the entire experience is akin to the eighth circle of hell.
That experience is what writer-directorGerardJohnsondraws on for his latest thriller,Odyssey, about estate agent Natasha “Tash” Flynn (Polly Maberly) and her descent into London’s criminal underbelly after a business deal goes wrong. On the surface, everything’s going great: she’s got an enthusiastic new mentee, her coworkers are about to launch a new “global letting” app, and she’s about to go through with a merger with a major real estate company. To the naked eye, Tash has it all — until we’re treated to a look at her life outside the office.
Because in reality, she’s thousands of pounds in debt trying to keep her business afloat. And it’s not just any debt, because why would it be? In addition to having the bank on her at all hours, Tash owes money to more than one nefarious player — namely “brothers” Dan and Will Hayter (Guy BurnetandRyan Hayes), who’ve kidnapped another estate agent for not paying backhisdebts. When they offer to absolve her of hers in exchange for hiding the agent on one of her unsold properties, Tash winds up in a hell of her own creation, desperate to find a way out.
Polly Maberly Is a Force to Be Reckoned With
At the center of it all, Maberly is a force, the lynchpin keeping the whole thing from descending into just another London-set crime drama in a basket full of them. Tash is all sharp angles, down to the Bluetooth permanently affixed to her ear, an aura familiar to anyone who’s ever run in circles with people in business — the kind that’ll poke your eye out if you attempt to get too close. She lets no one in, even as she gets so far in over her head that she’s seconds away from drowning, and Maberly balances an outward expression of confidence and bluster with a frantic desperation lying just under the surface. She’s got a kind of bite that’s rare to find in female characters these days, and Maberly isn’t trying to garner any sympathy for Tash with her performance, nor should she —the enjoyment of the film comes from how utterly insufferable she becomesthe more she digs herself into a hole she can’t escape.
There’s a kind of delicious conflict watching Maberly play such a patently terrible person, one who’s clearly only in it for herself, with no sense of self-preservation or care for others. On one hand, it’s fun to watch her suffer, to see the gatekeeper of something that should be a public right get knocked down a few pegs — and on the other, you’re rooting for her, especially when the third act kicks offJohn Wickstyle. In an era when media literacy is at an all-time low and audiences demand that we must be able to relate to a film or TV show’s POV character, Tash is delightfully awful, aCask of Amontillado-esque figure who’s so self-centered she’s impossible to stop watching.
The World of ‘Odyssey’ Is What Sets It Apart
But while Tash is definitely intolerable, the film does an even better job of building up the seedy, grimy world around her — a criminal underbelly that skews far more towards an episode of Luther than it does the Cockney-accented,Guy Ritchie-directed versions of London’s criminal underbelly that we’re used to seeing on the big screen.Tash has very real blood on her hands, and it’s clear as the film goes on that it’s the kind that leaves stains for the rest of your life, even if she weren’t so committed to having one foot in the world of crime.
The contrast of that world with the kind of business Tash is trying to run almost harkens back to the golden age of yuppies in a sense, moving in tandem with projects likeAmerican Psychoto expose the underbelly of those who hold all the power and influence.It’s a scathing critique from Johnson about the housing crisis in England— and globally,Odyssey’smessage is certainly universal — and about the state of capitalism, and what those who yearn for power are willing to do to attain or keep it, by any means necessary. They wear a smile on their face as they describe overpriced shoebox apartments as “cozy,” folding their hands behind their backs to hide the knife they use to stab in the back anyone who gets in their way.
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“Was all this legal? Absolutely not.”
It helps that Johnson rarely keeps the camera still,giving the entire thing a constant, coked-up energythat reflects Tash’s panic the closer she gets to disaster. Even as the film slows towards the end of its second act, its visuals keep the mood going, a shot in the arm to keep you interested until we finally meet the mysterious Viking (Mikael Persbrandt), a man who not only becomes Tash’s deus ex machina, but also reveals that this isn’t her first rodeo with this kind of issue, and probably won’t be her last.
There’s a brief moment where you wonder just how this manages to fit with the set-up of the rest of the film, especially since it takes a hot minute to really get going, butlike Tash, Johnson clearly has enough bullish courage to see the thing through,muscling through what feels a lot like tonal discord to an impressive finish. Brick by brick, he dismantles the systems we’ve become so used to despite how much they harm us, leaving everyone — Tash included — uncertain of what comes next, and whether we can keep it together at all.
Odysseyhad its world premiere at this year’s SXSW Film Festival.
Gerard Johnson’s housing crisis thriller Odyssey is sinister and scathing, with a powerhouse performance from Polly Maberly.
InOdyssey, Natasha Flynn, a sharp-tongued, coke-fueled London estate agent, juggles debts, danger, and deception. Her seemingly glossy life hides a spiraling mess of broken dreams, addiction, and a business on the brink of collapse. Enter Dan and Will, smooth-talking loan sharks with a sinister edge. Their offer? Easy cash, if she hides a kidnapped fellow estate agent.
