‘5lbs of Pressure’ Review: Forgiveness Comes Hard for an Ex-Con in This Unconvincing Crime Drama
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic It is no great aberration in the modern mysteries of film finances that the Manhattan-set “5lbs of Pressure” was, for whatever reason, shot in Manchester, England.
While the ruse works well enough superficially — maybe the industrial U.K. city is even more persuasively “gritty” than NYC these days — it might partly explain why writer-director Phil Allocco’s crime melodrama, out from Lionsgate in theaters and on demand, feels like it takes place in some semi-mythological movie genreland rather than a palpable, flesh-and-blood community.
That doesn’t hobble its violent thriller aspects, but it does limit our emotional involvement in its two-dimensional characters that we are expected to view as tragic figures.
Named after the lethal force behind a handgun’s trigger release, “5lbs” weaves an engaging-enough web of misunderstandings, grudges and doomed trajectories amongst various shady types.
Read more on variety.com