Danny Boyle

Four Edinburgh flatmates find their new lodger dead with a suitcase of cash under the bed, and Shallow Grave watches them fail the test in about a week. Speed is the constant: cut fast, saturate the colour, keep a pop track running underneath. Trainspotting does it with heroin and 28 Days Later with an empty London, and even 127 Hours, which is one man pinned under a rock for five days, refuses to sit still.

Signature

• Kinetic cutting, saturated palettes and a driving needle-drop score.
• Ordinary people handed a windfall or a catastrophe and found out.
• Genre switched mid-film without warning.
• Physical endurance filmed close and unglamorously.