Boiling Point

On arguably the busiest night of the year, charismatic and discerning chef Andy Jones (an amazing Stephen Graham) tries to find a balance between his professional and personal problems at his popular London restaurant. Filmed in one continuous and often breathtaking shot, Philip Barantini’s debut shows the gruff Jones and his long-suffering team dealing with crisis after crisis, and it becomes apparent that everything they have all worked so hard for is on the verge of collapse… ‘Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay actor turned director Philip Barantini’s low-budget Brit pic “Boiling Point” … is to say that I frequently forgot I was watching a brilliantly orchestrated one-shot film. Not that the format isn’t effective—far from it. It’s utterly immersive, conjuring the raw experience of an inexorably accelerating panic attack… [This] is first and foremost a gripping and gritty drama in which the spiralling descent of the narrative is enhanced and enriched by uninterrupted digital photography… The result is a spicy nerve-jangler served with a chargrilled side order of jet-black gallows humour—a divine comedy barrelling towards inevitable tragedy, played out in hell’s kitchen where someone is bound to get burned.’—Mark Kermode, The Observer