The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Directed by J Blakeson. Starring Gemma Arterton, Martin Compston, Eddie Marsan 18 cert, Movie House, Dublin Rd, Belfast; Cineworld/Vue, Dublin, 100 min

WHEN film-makers place any sort of artificial restriction on themselves – no dialogue, just the one set, a single take – one tends to suspect a slight hint of special pleading. Hey, they might be saying, you have to give us extra marks just for extricating ourselves from our self-imposed straitjacket.

J Blakeson, director of this raw British thriller, has not made life easy for himself. The film features only three characters and takes place almost entirely within the same grimy flat. The scenario urges less tolerant viewers to mutter “could have been a play” beneath their disappointed breath.

The good news is that no degrees of indulgence are required to enjoy this nippy, tense film. It certainly helps that the director's own script flings a twist at the viewer every 20 minutes or so. But the root of Alice Creed's success is in the canniness of its casting. Each of three quite different actors – badger-faced Eddie Marsan, permanently agitated Martin Compson and glamorous Gemma Arterton – somehow manages to accommodate the others' contrasting energy. It must count as a compliment that the restrictions fast become irrelevant.

Little should be revealed about the plot. Marsan and Compson play two hoodlums who kidnap Arterton’s posh heiress and imprison her in the upper floors of a decaying apartment block. They chain her to the bed, shove a gag in her mouth and talk her through the demeaning lavatory arrangements. Tensions and complications fast develop.

A few of the plot reversals seem, perhaps, a little bit too melodramatic. As the film progresses, however, most of the narrative holes are plugged and the motivations (just about) start to make sense.

We already know that Marsan and Compson can act, but Arterton, hitherto a Bond girl in Quantum of Solaceand a goddess in Clash of the Titans, retains her dignity impressively, despite being propelled into the occasional potentially exploitative situation. All in all, the picture exhibits a very smart use of its limited resources.