7 min
0
2024
United Kingdom
A school film project, ECHELON is a thrilling spy comedy, packed with action as MI5 operatives attempt to track and take down an international terrorist with access to dangerous chemical weapons.
Overview
Reviews
646 Studios Official wrote:★★★★★
**Echelon (2026)**
“War changes people.”
It also apparently makes them really interested in stink bombs.
There is a particular kind of cinema that cannot be explained through conventional criticism. *Echelon* is that cinema. A film that opens with young Kliment Slavkov fleeing British bombs during the 1991 Biscuit War in the fictional nation of Kolacia, before abruptly cutting to MI6 agent Curt Osborne briefing Nick Baker about him, is not merely a film. It is an event.
From the opening moments, *Echelon* establishes itself as a work of staggering geopolitical complexity. We are introduced to a world of international espionage, historical trauma and presumably extremely serious biscuit-related tensions. Slavkov's childhood immediately gives the film the emotional weight of a much larger saga. You can practically feel the director whispering into the camera: “This will matter later.”
And then we meet Kremlin Macaroonavich.
Cinema has given us many great villains. Darth Vader. Hans Gruber. Anton Chigurh. Kremlin Macaroonavich.
Macaroonavich is captured by Osborne, Baker and Damien Lynwood, interrogated, tortured and eventually killed after revealing Slavkov's address. This sequence establishes the moral ambiguity of the intelligence world while also establishing that *Echelon* has absolutely no intention of wasting its runtime.
People die.
The plot advances.
The MI6 boys kit up.
The house gets cleared.
Goons are deleted with the efficiency of people who have apparently completed every tactical shooter campaign ever made.
And then Damien gets shot by a mysterious figure upstairs.
At this point I genuinely thought I was watching the beginning of something profound.
Who was upstairs?
Was Slavkov not alone?
Was there a second organisation?
Was the entire MI6 operation a trap?
Was the Biscuit War connected?
What was in the box?
The answer to that final question has permanently altered my perception of cinema.
The chemical weapons are stink bombs.
I cannot stress this enough.
The entire film has built towards a revelation involving chemical weapons. People have been tortured. People have been killed. MI6 has mobilised. A house has been tactically cleared. Damien Lynwood has been shot. Curt Osborne has climbed a staircase with the grim determination of a man about to uncover an international conspiracy.
And then:
Stink bombs.
This is perhaps the greatest example of Chekhov's stink bomb ever committed to film.
The brilliance is that *Echelon* doesn't treat the revelation as a joke. Osborne is **disappointed**.
And I understand him.
Imagine being a senior MI6 operative. Imagine the paperwork. Imagine the briefing. Imagine explaining to your superiors that your team has suffered casualties during an operation to recover a box of chemical weapons, only to discover that the chemical weapons are novelty devices designed to make a room smell bad.
Of course he kills Slavkov.
At that point it's personal.
Slavkov pulls a gun and Osborne and Baker shoot him, concluding the most disproportionately violent investigation into novelty prank equipment in British intelligence history.
But the film isn't finished emotionally.
Damien is dying at the bottom of the stairs.
And in his final moments, he gives Curt his hat.
His **hat**.
There are films about grief. There are films about sacrifice. There are films about brotherhood.
None of them understand the hat like *Echelon* does.
The hat becomes a symbol.
A symbol of sacrifice.
A symbol of duty.
A symbol of friendship.
A symbol that Damien apparently had a spare hat and decided this was the appropriate time to transfer ownership.
And then the credits roll.
Except they don't.
POST-CREDITS.
A note.
An address.
A date.
That's it.
No explanation.
No dialogue.
No context.
Just enough information to make me realise that I have apparently watched Chapter One of the **Echelon Cinematic Universe**.
I don't know who lives at the address.
I don't know what happens on the date.
I don't know why the Biscuit War happened.
I don't know whether Macaroonavich had a family.
I don't know where the stink bombs came from.
I don't know whether Curt still has Damien's hat.
I don't know anything.
And yet somehow I need *Echelon 2* immediately.
There is something genuinely impressive about the commitment here. This isn't a film that understands its own limitations. It looks at the limitations of being a student film and simply decides to ignore them.
“Let's make a spy thriller.”
“Cool.”
“There's a fictional war.”
“Cool.”
“MI6.”
“Cool.”
“Torture.”
“Cool.”
“Tactical raid.”
“Cool.”
“Chemical weapons.”
“Cool.”
“Actually they're stink bombs.”
“Perfect.”
“Also one of the agents dies and gives the other his hat.”
“Cinema.”
*Echelon* is proof that filmmaking is ultimately about confidence. You can have limited resources. You can have a student cast. You can have whatever locations you can get.
What you cannot lack is the belief that your story deserves to exist.
And *Echelon* believes.
It believes in Kolacia.
It believes in the Biscuit War.
It believes in MI6.
It believes in Kremlin Macaroonavich.
It believes in chemical weapons.
It believes in stink bombs.
Most importantly, it believes in the hat.
A flawed masterpiece.
A geopolitical thriller.
A tragedy.
A comedy.
A warning.
A promise.
A box of stink bombs.
And, perhaps most importantly, **a date and an address.**
I will be there.
I don't know where.
I don't know when.
But I will be there.
**“Some wars are fought with bullets. Others are fought with biscuits.”**
