written by: Austin Collings and Gerard Johnson
produced by: Isabel Freer, John Jencks, Patrick Tolan, Matthew James Wilkinson
directed by: Gerard Johnson
rated: not rated (language and violent content equivalent to an R-rating)
runtime: 110 min.
U.S. release date: April 28, 2026 (VOD)

 

“There’s always a bit of light somewhere, may not be much, but it beats the fucking darkness.”

 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you just have to go through it? Everything piles up on you, seemingly out of nowhere, and you have no choice but to plow ahead. Natasha Flynn (Polly Maberly) has one of those weeks in “Odyssey,” a film set at the surprisingly robust intersection of the real estate world and the criminal underworld.

Having pulled herself up by her bootstraps to create her own real estate agency, Tasha has found herself drowning in debt. We’re introduced to her skipping out on a nearly one thousand pound dental procedure that doesn’t seem to have been completed properly, which continues to bother her for the rest of the film. She’s not terribly likable, but she’s fairly relatable, faking it until she makes it, despite having more or less “made it.” However, like everyone else in today’s world, she’s stretched way beyond her means.

An imminent merger between her agency and a much larger one puts her in need of additional funds. Bad borrowing habits have left her underwater, and she must go to a criminal acquaintance by the name of Dan (Guy Burnet) to acquire them. Party boy Dan and his much more unhinged brother Will (Ryan Hayes) want some collateral in order to ensure the fifty thousand pound loan, but what the pair proposes threatens to drag Tasha into the mud with them.

 

 

Tasha then decides that it’s time to seek out the help of an enigmatic man known as The Viking (Mikael Persbrandt), one with ties to her past. In fact, the film’s biggest liability is its script—by Austin Collings and director Gerard Johnson—which swings wildly between withholding information and then dumping it all out. The film is very well plotted, but it often misses the mark when trying to explain its characters’ actions.

And, although the film does not avoid violence or violent scenes, it literally opens with a tooth being yanked out. But the film’s third act plays like a slasher film, with the body count rising from zero to two dozen in the span of 20 minutes. I’m not suggesting that the ending is from a different movie or anything, but even an hour into the film I wasn’t thinking, “this movie will definitely rack up a double digit body count before it’s over.”

It’s that lack of set-up that makes the film feel as if it suddenly becomes an entirely different film in the back half. Things that are seeded in the script’s first two acts, like her toothache and the potential for dry pockets in her mouth, don’t really come back into play. I’m not sure if my expectations were subverted, necessarily, but it ends in a wildly different place from where it began.

 

 

And that’s the fun of the movie while you’re watching it. It’s difficult not to get caught up in the mania and excitement of Tasha’s predicament, particularly as the stakes get raised and the violence ramps up. However, it also feels as if it’s missing a few steps in that escalation, making the conclusion less of a foregone conclusion and more of a deus ex machina style “I did not see that coming” ending.

Leading lady Polly Maberly makes the trip worth it. She’s never less than totally captivating, making the most of her screen time, which is basically the entirety of the film’s 110 minutes. As I mentioned in my review for “Hokum”, Tasha is one of those prickly protagonists. Unlike in “Hokum,” though, Tasha doesn’t really get better as a person so much as she is constantly surrounded by people much worse than she. It’s a fascinating character, and Maberly clearly has a lot of fun sinking her teeth into Tasha.

Despite a title whose SEO is about to get royally screwed by Christopher Nolan, “Odyssey” is a fun time about morally dubious people making increasingly terrible decisions. The script feels as if it “yadda yadda’d” a few too many things, and fleshed out others that didn’t end up paying off, but none of that really matters while you’re watching the film. Polly Maberly’s commitment, as well as that of the entire supporting cast, makes the journey just that much more fun. It’s just a nasty little movie for nasty little people like me.

 

RATING: ***