The Story

In the right hands one camera click can make an icon. In the wrong hands it can destroy a life.

‘Stand clear!’ Bang! ‘One, one thousand... two, one thousand... three, one thousand... four, one thousand... five, one thousand! Clear!’ Bang!

As medics fight to save the life of controversial photographer Jimmy Tucker, the haunting tone of the heart monitor flat-lining marks not the end but a beginning!... a journey from the cradle to the gravy train of life, death, and beyond.

Aborigines believe the camera steals the soul...

Young Jimmy Tucker is a man on a mission, his aim: to highlight poverty and injustice using the power of his camera. He believes in photography as a force for good, but has yet to learn that, while in the right hands one camera click can make an icon, in the wrong it can destroy a life!

Jimmy’s father, a celebrated photojournalist, died under uncertain circumstances whilst on an assignment to photograph uncontacted tribes in the Australian Outback, missing his son’s birth back home in London. Jimmy is left the only reminder that he has of his father, his trusty Leica camera, which inspires Jimmy to follow in his father’s footsteps...

Jimmy’s mother eventually marries, but chooses poorly: Miles Mason, a flashy and ambitious media agent who frequently jibes at the young Jimmy about the Aborigine soul captured within his father’s Leica camera. Jealous and insecure about being unable to fill the void left by Jimmy’s late father, Miles eventually throws teenage Jimmy out.

Jimmy’s determination lands him a job at a local newspaper. His story highlighting the plight of the London homeless, Jimmy secretively photographs a young girl outside Angel tube station. On developing the picture, he falls in love with its subject, Tara. The shot wins him a prestigious photographic award. His euphoria is short lived as Tara confronts him for taking her picture without permission.

When his mother dies, her funeral brings Jimmy back into the clutches of his now successful but unscrupulous estranged stepfather, Miles. Miles uses Jimmy’s untimely vulnerabilities to entice him into his entourage by selling him the idea of completing an unfinished project of his late father’s, ’"London & The Seven Deadly Sins’. Jimmy desperately wants to emulate his father’s ideals. However, the mystery of his father’s death and its secret lie within the Leica camera, casting a shadow over Jimmy. He soon discovers that the devil is in the detail.

The manipulative and charismatic Miles lures Jimmy into the seedy world of paparazzi journalism. He becomes as corrupt as those he wants to expose, sliding inexorably into the corruption of sex, drugs and toxic fame. Goaded by Miles, Jimmy becomes entangled in the chase for the ’money shot’ that will expose and ruin a prominent political figure. As his life spirals out of control, he reaches out to the elusive Tara who always seems to vanish whenever he gets near.

Jimmy’s journey through the dark-side of London, which provides the atmospheric backdrop, takes him to a place where reality and dreams collide. All the while, the beautiful but enigmatic Tara acts as an angelic presence. In a final twist, the redeeming meaning of her gift, an angel made from a Coca-Cola tin, is revealed.

Jimmy’s discovery that his father felt that he was intruding on his subjects and that he had been in some way cursed by an Aboriginal presence doesn’t deter him from getting his ultimate scoop. In the celebration that follows Miles’ mask slips and he is exposed for his role in Jimmy’s father’s death. Miles’ devilish machinations have made Jimmy guilty of the very sins that he was trying to portray and he becomes confronted with the stark reality that it was not the souls of others that his camera had stolen, but his own!

Confused and consumed with rage, Jimmy makes a night-time motorcycle dash through London’s rainy streets to hunt down and kill Miles. Distracted by a Tara-like figure entering Angel tube station, he crashes...

As Jimmy lies poised between life and death in the operating theatre, lucid dreams merge with photographic imagery. He plummets into the bowels of London’s Underground and a phantasmagorical journey ensues: Jimmy careers along the Perdition Line, accompanied by ghosts, angels, and seven inspirational icons who confront him, at seven tube stations, regarding his own Seven Deadly Sins.

Had Jimmy not crashed, he would have committed murder. However, in a shifting reality Jimmy’s survival may not only depend on the medics fighting to revive him, but maybe, just maybe...from a guardian angel, whose gift of a tin angel, saved him from himself.