Comes a Bright Day

Commercials director Simon Aboud gets off to a patchy start in features with this ambitious but flawed heist-cum-love story. The conceit about London hotel porter Craig Roberts (Submarine) pretending to be grander than he is to impress jewellery shop assistant Imogen Poots is nicely done. But, from the moment that thieves Kevin McKidd and Josef Altin take Roberts, Poots and her boss, Timothy Spall, hostage during a bungled raid, Aboud struggles to cope with the shifts in tone between coy romance and gun-toting thriller. As one might expect of an ads veteran, the visuals are admirable. But Aboud proves less adept in handling action sequences like the street shoot-out, and he singularly fails to prevent McKidd from gnawing on the scenery. Yet, even though much of the dialogue is overwritten, Roberts and Poots make a quaint couple, while Spall is typically engaging.