Red Mercury (film)

Infobox Film | name = Red Mercury


caption =
director = Roy Battersby
producer = Peter Ansorge
Meenu Bachan
Vibha Bhatnagar
Dr. Phil Blackburn
Michael Wearing
writer = Farrukh Dhondy
starring = Stockard Channing
Pete Postlethwaite
Juliet Stevenson
Ron Silver
David Bradley
music = Colin Towns
cinematography = Uday Tiwari
editing = Jeremy Gibbs
distributor =
country = UK
released = flagicon|France May 13, 2005
flagicon|USA June 5, 2007
runtime = 113 min.
language = English
budget = £2,000,000 UK (est.)
imdb_id = 0443619

Red Mercury is a 2005 United Kingdom film starring Stockard Channing, Pete Postlethwaite, Juliet Stevenson, Ron Silver and David Bradley, and directed by Roy Battersby.cite news
url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443619/
title=Red Mercury
page=
pages=
publisher=IMDB
accessdate=2008-01-09]

Plot summary

The film is thriller about a terrorist kidnapping.cite news
url=http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article11293.ece
title=Stockard Channing: One tough cookie
publisher=The Independent
date=16 February 2005
accessdate=2008-01-10] Three terrorist bomb-makers get a tipoff that their safehouse is about to be raided;flee on foot; kidnap hostages in an attempt to escape.cite news
url=http://www.preview-online.com/s2005/feature_articles/red/index.html
title=PLAYING DIRTY
publisher=Preview Online
accessdate=2008-01-10]

Production

The film was produced quickly, was written, produced and filmed over a four month period.

The film was the first film aimed for a Western audience produced by a new film production company named Inspire, that planned to apply Bollywood film production methods to films made in the United Kingdom:quotation
“The company was originally set up to do Bollywood films in London that could take advantage of Gordon Brown’s very generous tax breaks. It was Farrukh who persuaded them to start doing British movies. I suppose our analogy was the early Film on Four - a contemporary work which had a more extended life than a TV movie. And it grew from there.”

According to the producers the writer, Farrukh Dhondy, was interviewed by British counter-terrorism officials, to verify that the bomb-plot in the script was unrelated to their active investigations.cite news
url=http://www.inspiredmovies.com/english/news-redmercuryfeaturedintheguardian?status=1
title=Red Mercury featured in The Guardian
publisher=Inspired films
accessdate=2008-01-10
quote="Two weeks ago, however, Farrukh was visited by Special Branch's anti-terrorism unit, who quizzed him about the script and demanded how he knew about red mercury."]

Release

The film was released at the 2005 Cannes film festival.cite news
url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443619/releaseinfo
title=Red Mercury release information
publisher=IMDB
accessdate=2008-01-09] It did not have a theatrical release in the USA, being released to DVD in June 2007.

References