Three brothers and their father go hunting in the remote Scottish woods. The father is a bully: rude, insulting, and chiding one brother for missing a shot at a deer. Until he realizes the deer is meant to be bait, and that the real prey is himself. The sons shoot Dad and bury him. It isn’t until they’re home that they realize they also buried the key to the family safe that Dad kept tied around his neck. They must go back to retrieve it.
All this happens in the first fifteen minutes of Betrayal. Meaning there’s a lot of time left.
The action in Betrayal is robust, with primal Straw Dogs-era Peckinpah energy, but its relentless motion masks a lack of plot cohesion. In press materials, writer/director Rodger Griffiths claims to be delving into the vagaries of the human psyche. What he means is the human psyche with a gun. Betrayal plays like a game of hot potato. Who’s got the rifle? Where’s Dad? Who’s in cahoots? Who’s zoomin’ who?
Mr. Griffiths keeps his script on a short leash. Most of the action takes place in or just outside of a house. This business is between the boys, and they pretty much comprise cowards or ingrates, guys glowering and getting the upper hand. It’s all very dour. Couldn’t one of them have been graced with a sardonic sense of humor?
As loyalties shift, so do motives. What at first appears to be simple greed turns into comeuppance for a crime. What do these guys want? (More to the point, why don’t they just leave the place?) Betrayal becomes a ballet of carnage: alliances and double crosses are the engine it runs on. But with no morality at its core, it’s hard to sympathize with any of Betrayal’s characters.
The cast is composed of up-and-coming actors from the UK. You’ll recognize Paul Higgins from In the Loop, Brian Vernel from Dunkirk, Daniel Portman from Game of Thrones, and Calum Ross from Netflix’s Wednesday. They do their best with what they have to work with. The only women in the cast are Anita Vettesse (Mother) and Joanne Thomson (Annie) and they are less characters than plot points, glimpsed fleetingly in flashback.
IMDb lists over twenty-five films with the title Betrayal. It’s unclear why this film is called that: disloyalty is the least of it. These guys cover a whole menu of malevolence. The film’s original title was Kill (how’s that for blunt?). Maybe just call it Kill Daddy?
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Betrayal. Directed by Rodger Griffiths. 2023. From Saban Films. On Digital and VOD. 94 minutes.