✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Cinema

Traders film review ★★★★★

29 Jul 16 – 29 Sep 16, Event times vary

With the semi-clever Traders, movie violence edges toward the acceptably satirical

By CW Contributor on 27/7/2016

John Bradley and Harry Killian in Traders
John Bradley and Harry Killian in Traders
Traders film review 3 Traders film review Matthew Robinson
John Bradley must be the only actor so far to have found a screen role more violent and unlikeable than his one in Game of Thrones.


In GoT he’s the hero of his own comic subplot, and his hands are relatively clean; as Vernon Stynes in Traders he’s cowardly, obsequious, indignant, squirmy, conniving and murderous. It’s a relief to see Bradley play a bastard – we were beginning to think he didn’t have it in him – and it’s a performance that marks him as a creditable character actor with a lifetime of such roles ahead of him. We look forward to watching his sweaty weasely scumbags for years to come.


Vernon is a commodities trader in post-crash Dublin, where the Celtic Tiger is in the process of being flayed and turned into a rug. Former financial hotshots are either handing back their company BMWs or driving them into trees; the latter is known as committing ‘econicide’, and Vernon sees an opportunity. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? And like any 21st Century chancer he sets up a website.


‘Traders’ is an online game in which two wretched souls liquidise and pool their remaining possessions, then fight to the death in an attempt to double their cash. The headiness of trading irresponsibly finds a nice schlocky metaphor – as far as high-concept ideas go, it’s a promising one. And when it remembers that it’s a satire, Traders pays dividends.



Foolish greedy Vernon has the temerity to call his murderous game ‘white-collar crime’, then corrects himself and calls it ‘up-market crime’, rebranding even as he speaks. One participating ‘trader’ offers to throw his expensive watch into the winnings ‘as a bonus’; another trader, female, makes a good threatening joke about the wage-gap: ‘You know the thing I find difficult about trading as a woman? Dragging fat, dead men into graves.’ This woman, you can tell, is going to break the glass ceiling and stab someone to death with the shards.


The problem with Traders is that there simply isn’t enough barbed wire wrapped around its baseball bat. It recalls American Psycho and Fight Club, but it doesn’t have the wildness of the former or the sly homoerotic subtext of the latter (a shame, for a film about men meeting online and patting each other down in bathrooms). It’s also hobbled by a bland leading man (Bradley is only supporting). Killian Scott’s Harry is our reluctant anti-hero, but the thing from Fight Club he most resembles isn’t Edward Norton but the Ikea furniture.


Traders still has some pleasurably deadpan moments. ‘If you ever find yourself in a fight to the death,’ says Harry in voiceover, ‘go for the throat. The throat is full of blood and air, and humans don’t last long without blood or air.’ But if you want a film that makes serial murder both funny and moving, watch Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers.


Not heavy enough for drama or sharp enough for satire, Traders is a blunt, simple weapon that just about does the job.


by Matthew Robinson

What Traders film review
Where Various Locations | MAP
Nearest tube Leicester Square (underground)
When 29 Jul 16 – 29 Sep 16, Event times vary
Price £determined by cinema
Website Click here for more details



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Harrison Ford in Shrinking, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)
What to watch on TV this week
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings

Editor's Picks


  • 1. SIZZLING SUMMER CINEMA

    Good reasons to sit in the dark

    2. BFI CELEBRATES GREAT FILM MAKER

    Pedro Amoldóvar gets a retrospective

    3. CHEVALIER INTERVIEW

    We talk to director Athina Tsangari

Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

Cinema

Thriller

Drama

You might like

  • Eddie Redmayne, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film

    Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film review ★★★★★

  • Detail from the poster for The Killing$ of Tony Blair

    The Killing$ of Tony Blair film review ★★★★★

  • Light Years film 2016

    Light Years film 2016

  • A young Chet Baker

    Born to be Blue film review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×