Ballistic

The premise lands like a gut punch: a mother learns that the bullet that killed her soldier son in Afghanistan was made at the very factory where she clocks in each day. From that one grim coincidence the film builds a revenge story with a working-class ache underneath it, aiming its anger at the machinery of profit as much as at any individual. A mother's pain, a bullet's purpose, says the tagline, and it means both halves, because grief here is less a motivation than a fuel line.

Made for viewers who like their vengeance thrillers lean and furious rather than slick. At ninety-one minutes there is almost no padding; expect tight escalation, a grounded tone, and a protagonist whose ordinariness is the whole point. Anyone drawn to stories where regular people turn their fury on institutions will find it satisfying, while those wanting elaborate set pieces should temper expectations. A brisk, bitter little thriller with a real wound at its centre.