New Town Killers is a British drama film written and directed by Richhard Jobson, starring James Anthony Pearson, Alastair Mackenzie and Dougray Scott.
Two private bankers, Alistair and Jamie, who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a 12 hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society. Their next target is Sean Macdonald; a parentless teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh. She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast. Sean agrees to play for cash. He soon realises he's walked into twelve hours of hell where survival is the name of the game.
The film debut of Karen Gillan, who has a small part as the young woman at the bus station.
Tropes:
- Booby Trap: Alistair has booby-trapped the stairs in his own house, as Sean finds out when he breaks in and is nearly impaled by a set of spikes that drops from the ceiling.
- Car Cushion: Sean attempts to escape by leaping off the ledge outside Sam's flat on to the roof of an ambulance passing by underneath. He mistimes the jump, bounces off the roof and crashes to the street; knocking himself out. the ambulance takes him to hospital, which temporarily gets him away from Alistair and Jamie.
- Disposable Vagrant: While chasing Sean through the subway, Alistair shoots a homeless man's dog for barking at him. He then shoots the vagrant For the Evulz.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Alistair throwing boiling water into the face of the pregnant Alice and then knocking her to the floor and preparing to stomp on her is too much for his partner-in-crime Jamie, who grabs Alistair's gun and points it in his face to get him to stop.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Covers a period of slightly over 12 hours.
- Fake Out Makeout: Sean avoids detection in a nightclub by grabbing a random girl on the dance floor and kissing her. She doesn't seem to mind.
- Fingore: After knocking Sean to the floor during their fight in the cellar, Alistair grabs Sean's hand and breaks several of fingers to stop him grabbing for the gun.
- Frame-Up: Alistair and Jamie plant a stolen cigar case on Sean to get him fired from his job as a bathroom attendant at a restaurant.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: When the street gang are fleeing from Alistair and Jamie following their Mugging the Monster attempt, Alistair hands Jamie a bottle and Jamie throws it into the head of one of the fleeing gang members.
- Hey, Wait!: Sean is sitting outside Alistair's house in a stolen car when the same two police officers who moved him on at the start of the movie pull up alongside him and ask if everything is alright. A nervous Sean says yes and the officers then tell him he has a piece of shirt sticking out of his boot. Sean gets out, opens the boot, moves dead body he has in there, and closes the boot again. The police bid him a good day and drive off; not having recognised him because he now wearing a suit and looking respectable.
- High-Altitude Interrogation: Jamie dangles Sam out of the window of his flat in attempt to get Sean to turn himself in.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Sean is contacted by two men, Alistair Raskolnikov and Jamie Stewart, who offer him twelve thousand pounds to him to play hide and seek for twelve hours with them. If their hunting fails, Sean would earn the amount on the next morning. Sean accepts but finds that Alistair is a sadistic paranoid killer and he needs to escape not only for the money, but to survive.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Sean is offered a large sum of money by two businessmen for them to hunt him throughout the city until either they kill him or he survives the night. At one point he goes to hide out at his friend Sam's house and tells him there are guys trying to kill him. Sam later mentions the two guys. "I never said there were two of them."
- Kick the Dog: While chasing Sean through the subway, Alistair shoots a homeless man's dog for barking at him. He then shoots the vagrant For the Evulz.
- A MacGuffin Full of Money: Sean agrees to play the game of cat-and-mouse against Alistair and Jamie for £11,000 in a locker at the train station.
- Mugging the Monster: Sean sends the local street gang to Alistair and Jamie's Maserati. When they turn up, the gang think a pair of poncy bankers will be easy pickings. This last until Alistair slams their leader to the pavement and stomps his head in.
- Le Parkour: Sean's skill at free-running helps him to stay ahead of Alistair and Jamie who are Hunting the Most Dangerous Game with him as the prey by going over and across the historic architecture of Edinburgh.
- Punk in the Trunk: After finding the Maserati with Jamie's body in it, Sean dumps the body in the boot and drives off in the car.
- Searching the Stalls: Alistair and Jamie do this when the Tracking Device they planted on Sean tells them he is hiding in toilet of the nightclub.
- The Sociopath: Alistair. When Sean asks him why he has been hunting and killing people, Alistair reply is a simple "Because I can".
- Tracking Device: Wondering how Alistair and Jamie keep finding him no matter where he runs, Sean checks every thing he is carrying and discovers Alistair has planted a tracking device in his leather jacket. He manages to slip the device on to a similar looking boy in the club, resulting in the other getting a severe kicking from Alistair.
- Trapped by Gambling Debts: Sean discovers that his sister Alice owes £12,000 in gambling debts to dangerous people that are forcing her to travel to Amsterdam to traffic drugs.
