The Times, 16 July 1992, by Geoff Brown.
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<snip>

At the National Film Theatre for eight performances, up pops 
the valiant, British, but sadly deficient "Dakota Road," 
made two years ago and still doing the rounds. Only last 
week this first feature by playwright and theatre director 
Nick Ward won the top prize at Mystfest, Cattolica's annual 
festival of mystery and suspense. Maybe the Italian air went 
to the jurors' heads; or maybe subtitles helped to obscure 
the laughably laconic dialogue of Ward's rural types, 
trailing dark sexual passions through the Norfolk fens. 
"Cold Comfort Farm" comes too easily to mind. 

The venture is not entirely risible. Helped by the burnished 
lighting of cameraman Ian Wilson (Derek Jarman's eyes on 
"Edward II"), Ward squeezes some cinematic poetry from the 
flat fen horizons flecked with telegraph poles, two-carriage 
trains that never seem to stop, and low-flying American 
combat planes which are based at a nearby airfield. 

But even with good actors such as Alan Howard, Ward cannot 
turn his emotional invalids (one lustful landowner, one 
teenage sexpot, one nervous orphan, one wimpish vicar, one 
deadbeat father obsessed with his boots) into people worth 
caring for. Filled to the sprockets with grey skies, 
poisoned fish and miserable lives, this kind of film might 
lower Norfolk house prices. 

<snip>



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