Red Right Hand - AD Introduction

Red Right Hand – Audio Described Introduction

This is an audio-described introduction to Red Right Hand, a 2024 Sky Original action thriller directed by Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms, starring Orlando Bloom and Andie MacDowell.

Set in the fictional American backwater of Odim County, the story centres around Cash, played by Orlando Bloom. While attempting to help his brother-in-law, Finney, repay a debt, Cash is forced into the service of the ruthless drug lord, Big Cat, who wields power over the region’s residents and police, aided by an entourage of associates who carry out her dirty work.

Cash is a rugged-looking white man of around 40 years old. He has a full head of dark hair which he wears swept back with the ends curling up around the nape of his neck. His dark beard is patchy at the sides but full around the chin and he has a thick moustache. He works out to maintain his six pack and muscular physique. His chest is tattooed with two eagles and the words ‘Family Loyalty’; his left hand with a gothic cross, while his right wrist and hand bear the deep scars of burned flesh. Cash’s clothing is hard-wearing and understated: jeans with heavy shirts over t-shirts, often paired with a baseball cap and sometimes a zip-up hoodie.

Cash lives in a small wooden cabin where the woods meet the edge of farmed land. Its dim front room is the only part of the interior featured; it hosts a fireplace, bookshelves and a small workbench where Cash sits to work on a decorative wood carving. At the front of the timber building, a rocking chair sits on a veranda, beneath a canopy held up by sawn-off tree trunks.

Finney lives close by in a farmhouse with his daughter Savannah, Cash’s niece. The pair of them look after livestock including chickens, cows and horses.

Finney is around the same age as Cash, but scruffier in appearance. Battling alcohol addiction, he has a bedraggled look about him; his unbrushed hair falling over his face and pale brown beard left unkempt. He typically wears lumberjack style checked shirts.

Savannah is 14 years old. She’s white with long chestnut brown hair, blue eyes and a thoughtful demeanour. On the family’s farm, she tends to the animals independently; dressed in a denim jacket or dungarees. She’s mature for her age; intelligent and studious, with a keen interest in books. 

The farm – also referred to as ‘the ranch’, is a modest smallholding consisting of a few fields, three outbuildings and the small, single-storey farmhouse. In Savannah’s bedroom, a wall is filled with photographs of happier times; a smiling family of three including Savannah’s mother, Rachel.

Big Cat, played by Andie MacDowell, is a white woman of around 60 years old. She wears her coarse-textured long silver hair in a twisted plait or low ponytail and dresses boldly, donning a loose, snake-print blouse with a pair of flashy stilettos to host a soiree for her associates. Her everyday clothes are practical but stylish; various tailored leather jackets with boots and dark, slim-fitting jeans.

Big Cat has an air of unapologetic authority, presiding over a luxurious mansion on a private estate. The landscaped front and back gardens are manned by security guards with guns and Alsatians. The building’s red-brick façade features white-framed Georgian style sash windows and French doors. The interiors consist of wood-panelled rooms and open fires on the ground floor, with two staircases leading to a sprawling suite of adjoining chambers upstairs.  No expense has been spared on the gleaming chandeliers and opulent furnishings. Artworks adorning the house include a colourful painted close-up of a big cat’s eye, and a giant red impressionistic image of a cat’s face that fills one end of the hallway.

Big Cat’s gang of heavies is almost exclusively male. (One woman appears briefly at the mansion gathering). Mostly white and in their 30s and 40s, the crew of swaggering, burly goons are well-groomed, expensively dressed and armed with pistols or – when they really mean business - automatic rifles. Key members of the gang include “The Buck”, “The Doe”, Jett and Wes.

Zeke is the suited occupant of a private office at Odim County Legal; a law firm which handles Big Cat’s financial affairs. He’s slight, with a bird-like face, a ginger beard, and long ginger hair that’s worn in a ponytail. He later appears at Big Cat’s gathering, where he stands out from her other, more heavy-set associates.

Wilder is Cash’s friend and confidante, and a pastor at the Odim County church. He’s pale-skinned with a shaved head and greying stubble. A ‘man of the people’, he speaks openly of his own past criminal record and subsequent repentance. He dresses casually even when preaching, bearing no outward signs of his religious devotion.

The main cast is completed by Sheriff Hollister and his deputy, Duke. The Sheriff has a pale white complexion, with dark blond hair in a combover and a neatly trimmed moustache. Embittered by his experiences of a broken justice system, he’s sour-faced and makes no secret of his hostility towards Cash. Duke, a well turned-out black man with a goatee beard, is younger and less jaded than the Sheriff; more willing to engage with Cash. Both wear grey uniform shirts with appliqued shields on the arms, and a gold star shaped pin badge completes the Sheriff’s outfit.

The action unfolds across various locations in Odim County, an Appalachian area dominated by tree-covered hills. Quiet country lanes and remote farm buildings provide Big Cat’s gang with plenty of well-hidden places to cook up drugs, strike underhand deals and perpetrate violence away from witnesses. The small town of Odim is home to the church and the law firm’s offices. Both are well-maintained heritage buildings with red bricks, picket fences, [DA1] and pleasant, bright interiors. Other buildings include a classic American diner with red plastic bench seating and the Sheriff’s office, where a large collection of rifles and handguns hangs proudly on a wall opposite a collage of children’s drawings.

Red Right Hand is showing on Sky Cinema Premiere from 25 February 2024 with audio description by Jenni Elbourne