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This is one pretty messy and hard to follow movie, that's constantly building up toward something but by the end of it I still don't really know or understand what it was building up toward and what the overall point of this movie was supposed to be. Guess that in its essence it's mostly trying to be one of those movies that tries to be a realistic portrayal of urban live, on the London streets, seen through the eyes of British youngster, of Sri Lakan descent. It however does so by creating a whole bunch of unlikely events and unrealistic characters.

It's needlessly confusing because it follows a whole bunch of different characters around and you just don't ever know who's who, what they want and how their stories are supposed to be connected. It's made all the more worse by not always telling things chronologically and at times you don't even really know when the movie is set in the present time and when it's getting told as a flashback.

It's also not a very objective movie. I mean, it's very clear this movie is not only told from the perspective or Sri Lakan youngster but also had people of Sri Lakan descent behind the cameras and as a writer. In this movie basically everybody is against them and it doesn't seem to matter to the movie that all of the characters are in one way or another involved with criminal events or groups. It still tries to portray the characters in this as victims, mostly by demonizing all other ethnicities. The black people are cold blooded murderers and the white men are all racist, or treat the youngsters as hardcore terrorists. It's pretty ridicules how out of the blue people yell out racial slurs and chase the movie its main characters through half of London, for no good or apparent reason. And lets just pretend for a moment that all of this is true and happens in real life, this movie still does a very poor job at bringing it to the screen realistically. This really is not a movie that provides any solutions, or sheds any new light on the situation, or deals with any racial issues in a very realistic or convincing matter, even though the potential for all of it was still clearly there.

And that really remains the movie its biggest problem. It wants to be taken seriously and it tries to give a gritty and realistic portrayal of urban live but it fails in every way, due to its poor story and way storytelling, in this movie. It besides appear that the filmmakers were more focused on the movie its technical aspects and the visual style. It tries to give the movie pace, by using fast cuts and flashy camera-work but they should had been more focused on its story and actors instead.

The acting is also pretty poor in this and actually the main reason why it's hard to ever care about any of the characters or feel emotionally involved with its story. The acting is pretty flat all throughout. When someone is angry, it's something very over-the-top and when someone is sad about something, all they basically do is cry but they don't ever make you feel their emotions. No big surprise, once you learn that most of the actors in this had no prior experiences but to be fair, you really can't put all of the blame on the actors for their performance. They are also incredibly let down by its lacking directing and the poorly written dialog and characters.

a failure of a movie, in just about every regard.

3/10

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About Frank Veenstra

Watches movies...writes about them...and that's it for now.
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