Tag Archives: Drama

Midnight Express  (1978)    74/100

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Rating :  74/100                                                                      121 Min        18

Possibly Alan Parker’s most famous film, the true story of William Hayes who tries to smuggle some hashish for his friends back home in the States from Turkey in 1970 and, well, he doesn’t make it. The screenplay won Oliver Stone an Oscar for 1978 and for the first half the film holds your interest whilst remaining nothing special. There’s even a decidedly odd homoerotic moment that stands out completely askew from the rest of the narrative as Parker fumbles his opportunity to show the gay relationship that Hayes actually did engage with, but throughout the film the Turkish characters and Parker’s decision not to translate what they are saying proves to be one of the more interesting elements. It helps create the sense of complete alienation that the main character feels, and each of the Turkish actors seem to have so much individual character of their own it’s almost like a sci-fi (Stone has since apologised for his overwhelmingly negative depiction of all the Turks in the film). The use of sound, particularly of a heart racing, works quite well here too.

Prison films are a staple of cinema and sadly how good they are can sometimes be marked by how harrowing and brutal the portrayal of the experience, as well as how much we identify with the character’s struggle. ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ (94) regularly and deservedly features on many people’s ‘best films ever’ list, but worth also checking out is the classic ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ (85) and the recent British film ‘Offender’ (12). Here there is no disappointment in the drama stakes as the hellish downfall of reality for the main character continues to gather pace. Brad Davis plays the lead, with Randy Quaid and John Hurt for company. A fairly shocking insight into the Turkish legal system of the 70’s, a country that, prior to the credit crunch of 2007 and the resultant financial crisis, was desperate to join the European Union and was repeatedly met with concerns over not just its geographical position straddling the political divide between Europe and the Middle East, but also over its constant alleged, and widespread, human rights abuses.

Shadow Dancer  (2012)    62/100

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Rating :  62/100                                                                      101 Min        15

Beginning in Belfast in 1973 and based on the novel by Tom Bradby, Shadow Dancer mainly takes place in the early nineties and focuses on one family and their involvement with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It stars Andrea Riseborough as the main character Colette McVeigh and Clive Owen as the British MI5 agent assigned to deal with her, supervised by Gillian Anderson in support (who played an MI7 chief in ‘Johnny English Reborn’ last year) who has spent the last eight months profiling Colette and working on a strategy to use the girl against her own Republican activist brothers. The scenario feels real, but the biggest problem with the film is that the characters do not.

Clive Owen gives Colette his real name on their first meet in order to gain her trust, for example. Clive Owen is dependently good throughout, but the central performance from Riseborough leads to other problems. We are given the very strong sense she is someone heavily involved in the Troubles and violent IRA activity, and yet she seems strangely disinterested, or disconnected from most of what’s going on around her. It creates a disingenuous feeling that permeates the whole film, as if the entire whole is an attempt to artificially create tense drama, rather than the audience witnessing a dramatic scenario happening to real people. The film has a grainy texture to it, making it seem older than it should, and the protagonists are given an equation to solve that only has a few possible solutions, but it still takes them a pretty long time to solve it.

Unfortunately, anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and watched ‘W.E.’ (11) and was, presumably, scarred by it, may find it impossible to shake the associations with Andrea Riseborough’s last cinematic outing. The film was so bad laws should be passed to prevent Madonna from ever opening her mouth to talk about British history again, or from ever making another film for that matter. In it, Riseborough played Wallace Simpson, and the film aimed to paint the American woman who seduced a British monarch, and forced his abdication from the throne, in a better light than is usually cast upon her. The overriding memory is that she comes across as a wanton slut in the film, but the same sort of hopelessly vague and insincere aura that surrounded her performance there, seems to have many ‘shadows’ here. That said, her Belfast accent is very good, and remains so throughout. It’s pretty rare to find really convincing and consistent accents on the big-screen as actors transcend different nationalities, though quite frequently during the film the dialogue becomes muffled and difficult to make out.

Director James Marsh, who won an Oscar for the documentary ‘Man on Wire’ (Sean Connery describes this as one of his favourite movies incidentally), has created a fairly linear, small scale piece that he’s tried to give a distinctive feel. He hasn’t completely failed, the beach scenes are lovely and memorable, but it’s only the suitably dramatic ending that saves it from complete mediocrity. Documentaries don’t always start at the very beginning, and perhaps here it would have been better to save the opening flashback for a while and simply introduce the characters more. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Marsh had been very much inspired by ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ (11), and was trying to emulate a similar feel for this work. The book is probably a lot better.

Red Lights  (2012)    58/100

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Rating : 58/100                                                                       114 Min        15

In Brief : Interesting, with strong performances all round by the cast, but ultimately let down by a screenplay with more than a few oversights.

Contents :
Mini Review
Plot
Full Review

Mini Review : ‘Red Lights’ is a film that needed enigmatic performances from its lead cast and an intelligent, intriguing screenplay in order to succeed. It definitely scores a thumbs up in the first category, but is left lacking in the second with a less than polished final product. The whole has a sort of early eighties feel to it, and the tension mounts as we follow the main characters on their crusade to explore and disprove the paranormal. But then it kind of stutters along, and delivers a less than awe inspiring finale. Although the main story arc looses momentum and is at times a little dubious there are still a few nice touches to enjoy here, but on the whole it feels like it’s ambling in the footsteps of similar fiction before it rather than portraying a bold vision of its own.

Plot : Margaret Matheson and Tom Buckley are two university colleagues who have a mandate to debunk supernatural phenomena. Their work progresses successfully until the return to the scene of one of the world’s most high profile claimants of supernatural gifts. For one, he is a spectre of the past, and one that should be left there; for the other, he represents the ultimate challenge.

Full Review (Contains spoilers) : Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy, and Sigourney Weaver star in this tale of fraud and supernatural realisation from Spanish writer and director Rodrigo Cortes, following on from the success of his ‘Buried’ with Ryan Reynolds in 2010 (not on writing duty in that instance). The story begins with Murphy and Weaver’s characters (Tom Buckley and Margaret Matheson respectively) exposing a séance and incumbent medium as bunk. Initially, we the audience are unsure as to what we are about to be treated to, whether or not Sigourney Weaver may be playing a sort of ‘super psychic’, as becoming of her acting calibre, brought in to help with this super scary, difficult case. It becomes apparent after this séance that she, and her physics graduate-sidekick Tom, work in academia exposing such hocussing professionally. It allows the director to play with familiar horror film techniques, something which he continues to do in parallel with the story; playing it off against Robert De Niro’s Simon Silver and whether or not he has real psychic abilities, and is thus the exception to the rule. Indeed, in this sense the beginning, and to a lesser extent the whole, is very similar to ‘The Awakening’ released last year (with a wonderful turn by the rising star that is Rebecca Hall).

This question regarding Silver’s legitimacy forms then the crux of the piece. The two protagonists are given a little more depth, mostly via relation to their profession. We learn Tom’s mother may have been given a bogus medical diagnosis from a psychic and died from it, but then later he refers to his mother, to someone else, in the present tense. Matheson’s back story gives the plot a little more meaning, as we see her son lying in a vegetative state in hospital and she tells us the nature of her work doesn’t allow her to give up hope and turn off the machine as she has no evidence or faith that anything awaits us in the afterlife. We also learn she has met Silver in a televised interview thirty years ago and during it he made reference to her hospitalised son, making even her want to believe for a moment. She uses this anecdote to emphasise how dangerous he is to Tom, who seems to be becoming obsessed with exposing Silva as a fraud to the world.

This back story proves interesting, as even though De Niro and Weaver never meet onscreen we are given the distinct impression that their characters’ pasts are a little more involved than we are being told. Perhaps Matheson witnessed something so awesome at the hands of Silver, that she felt compelled to begin a saga to disprove every seemingly supernatural phenomenon, unable to come to terms with what she witnessed. Or perhaps Silver met his match with Matheson, fell in love with her, or even sensed some latent dangerous talent in her akin to his own. It is even possible that he is Buckley’s father, or there is a much more sinister and earthly secret between them. The final answer comes as a misdirected mixture of some of these things, but the acting talents of Weaver and De Niro make the dynamic compelling.

For Tom, he is set up as the naïve headstrong apprentice heading for disaster, a concept not particularly original but nevertheless a wonderfully compelling artifice of storytelling. He is given a love interest in the form of Elizabeth Olsen, a young undergrad in Matheson’s class. It’s unfortunately a completely frivolous and pointless role whose only purpose is to provide a sounding board for some background conversation and, perhaps, a pretty young girl for male members of the audience to look at. Doubly unfortunate for Miss Olsen as this follows directly on from ‘Silent House’ (11), a bad remake of an already terrible Spanish film ‘La Casa Muda’ (10), where the audience were invited to look down her top and nowhere else for pretty much the entirety of the film. Her breasts did perform their role quite admirably, and here she herself does likewise so expect to see more from her in the future, though hopefully with more of an involving role next time.

Further support is given from Toby Jones, a research scientist at the university whose department gets way more funding than Matheson’s and is placed as countermeasure to herself, trying to scientifically prove supernaturalism rather than disprove it. Toby Jones is an incredibly prolific, diverse actor (see his own take on Capote in ‘Infamous’ 06) and he is as usual good here, though again the role is solely in service of the narrative. Cillian Murphy himself gives a convincing performance throughout, complete with what looks a pretty skilful coin flourish, although, thanks to poor camera direction, his magic tricks look less than convincing. Joely Richardson also makes an appearance as Silver’s PA, infusing the role with sex appeal as she does so well, but again, despite adding a little more glamour, the role is entirely 2D and very short (The Red Dragon would like to personally confirm that Joely Richardson is as alluring in real life as she is onscreen).

Before the Silver story really gets going we see the myth busting duo expose a would be psychic in a theatre full of people – breaking into the blacked out box next to theirs where radio messages were being sent to the performer below, who had been busy achieving the seemingly impossible task of knowing private information about random people in the audience. Earlier in the car park outside they pilfer the notebook of one of the performer’s accomplices who seemed to be taking down registration numbers, no doubt to look up information about the vehicles owners and cross reference it with ticket sales. It’s interesting, because although here it is in the context of fake faith healers, and results in criminal prosecution for the perpetrators, this doubtless has parallels with how many perform stage magic today. Derren Brown, for example, commonly seems to pull information from random audience members’ heads, and also mysteriously matches seat numbers to the same people as their introduction. It would be interesting to take a good, close look at the legal context of purchasing a theatre ticket, and the information you give out at the time …

In any event it’s a good scene for the film. When in jail, the con artist tells the zealous Tom to beware of Silver, his mentor, as he has no idea what he is meddling with, increasing the sense of danger and power that De Niro’s character is given to exude; a sense that De Niro is expertly able to deliver. From here we are led to the most interesting part of the film, when the headstrong Mr Buckley decides to go it alone and head back to what appears to be the same box in the same theatre in order to hopefully expose Silver as an artful deceiver. Though this does seem to be a rather dubious theatrical booking, given his understudy was arrested on the very same stage for falsely doing pretty much exactly what Silver is proffering to do mere days/weeks previously.

During this particular performance all eyes are on Silver on centre stage, as an overweight patient is wheeled out on a small operating table, fleshy belly and midriff exposed, and he seems to achieve a small miracle – reaching into the flesh of the man before him and pulling out the bloodied, diseased tissue inside, then somehow closing the wound with his powers and leaving the prone body cured and healthy. When performed on stage this trick almost certainly makes use of a false stomach. Here the audience is wowed, but the scene continually cuts to an increasingly desperate Tom, who is beavering away with his radio equipment as it randomly begins to explode in bursts around him, as if Silver’s cognitive special powers can sense the attempt and they take action. Though the fact real psychic abilities would not need to protect themselves leads us to think it is simply sabotage. All of this though, is not what makes it so interesting. What makes it worthy of special note, is that The Red Dragon has seen this before.

Bizarrely, almost this entire, complete scene appears in an old issue of Spiderman. Now, exactly what issue, or indeed exactly which comic, The Red Dragon isn’t sure, and can’t be without going on a particularly involved search … actually the wonders of the web (no pun intended) have revealed it was in fact ‘Web of Spiderman’ issue 41, ‘The Cult of Love part 2’, if anyone wants to check it out and test my hypothesis then please do, as The Red Dragon freely admits he is working on a many years old memory here. This issue was part two of a four part story that seen Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spiderman, join a cult in order to try and rescue a girl who had become indoctrinated by them. I never got hold of the subsequent edition so never found out how it ended, but during the story Parker is seated in an auditorium watching the exact same procedure being carried out.

The panels of the story clearly show the performer’s hands going into the flesh, coming out bloodied, and then the same flesh washed and mysteriously healed, with fresh water on it just as in the film. In the comic Parker begins to doubt himself as a narrative voice-over tells us such shows are how cults groom their members, daring even the inquisitive and intelligent to believe. Although in the film Tom appears to be preoccupied, the suggestion is still that the performance and the increasingly paranormal activity surrounding it (the whole building begins to tremble) are sucking him in and begin to take a noticeable toll on his mental health, as what his eyes witness clashes so dramatically with the faith he has instilled in his career proving such things to be false. Although this is purely working from memory, the images of the comic and the film are graphically so similar in my mind it seems difficult to imagine one was not influenced by the other.

Interestingly, in each of the three interviews The Red Dragon has seen with Cillian Murphy and Rodrigo Cortes together, Cortes makes mention of the fact he spent a year and a half doing research for the film. Every time he says this, there is a noticeable shift in the expression of Cillian Murphy – is this because he’s slightly bored? Or because he knows this is somewhat misleading or bombastic? Did Cortes simply spend a year and a half reading Spiderman comics and watching spooky films? It’s not plagiarism per se, and certainly such shows in real life no doubt look very similar to the ones depicted in the comic and film, but it is perhaps a little too similar to the inspirational material for its own good, just as the beginning is too close to that of ‘The Awakening’.

From this point on the supernatural element of the film intensifies dramatically. Tom ends up in hospital after the show, then discovers that mysteriously Matheson has died whilst he was there. We learn that the rational explanation for this is a pre-existing medical condition, and indeed we have seen her taking some form of medication throughout. All manner of strange things occur around Buckley, including semi-explosive birds and bodily ceiling suspension. Beginning to lose the plot, his determination to find the truth deepens and he even attempts to confront Silver at one of his secret one-to-one sessions. Cue another nice scene where Tom is separated from Silver by what appears to be a line of salt on the floor, and he sits in awe of the mystic, afraid to speak out lest he give his identity away, and yet the enigmatic Silver seems to know anyway. The finale ensues with Silver undergoing a series of scientific tests and then putting on his last show in the city, and a desperate Tom adamant to prove fraud in the former as he heads for a showdown in the latter.

Here all the big revelations are unveiled, as Tom is beaten up by a paid heavy in the toilets at the show, proving to us that Silver is a fake (and prompting us to wonder if the untimely death of his main public enemy years ago was in fact murder), just as his friends at the university uncover falsity in the earlier experiment. The main aspect of this is that Silver is in fact not blind, something the characters have taken for granted but we have been invited to question early on when the camera gives us a close-up of his eyes and, given the whole thing is a question over his legitimacy, the obvious thing to ask is, well how do we know he is actually blind to begin with? The narrative offers us no hardcore evidence, he certainly appears to be, but then he is a showman. This revelation may also seem a bit of a let down not just because of its set up and delivery, but also because of the success of ‘The Prestige’ back in 2006, replete as it was with such disguises and showmanship. When Tom flicks a coin at him on stage to test him and he catches it, revealing his normal ability to see to the world, it’s a little too easy, surely he would have had the wherewithal to simply ignore it and let it sail past him?

Having said that, he is distracted at the time by the complimentary revelation of Tom’s actual supernatural powers as the whole place begins to shake, much as it did the last time around. Silver shouts repeatedly ‘How are you doing this?’ but surely a professional supernatural fraud such as himself would simply run with it? It could well be a trick not too dissimilar to one of his own. We come to learn the real story has been that of Tom, who has long suspected there was something different about himself, but who was unwilling to accept it, and instead devoted his life to disproving such fantasies. The anecdote he told about his mother, may or may not have something to do with himself, just as Matheson’s death and illness may similarly have something to do with him.

Indeed, his power seems to be haphazardly destructive, increasing when he’s under stress. One of the most curious incidents of its manifestation happens when news of Silver’s return to the scene has been announced and Matheson answers the phone. No one seems to be on the other end, and when she returns to the mug she’d left to take the call, the spoon in it is bent. She doesn’t seem too fussed by this. So we know very early on supernatural forces are at work and from this it points to either Silver, Matheson, or both. But Tom? Why the spoon? It’s nowhere near the phone and nothing else seems affected – does Matheson not react because she’s used to spoons randomly bending and thinks it’s normal? It works for the story at that point, but, well it’s a bit too silly and random.

Similarly, early on Matheson is questioned during a lecture on her beliefs and the possibility of real psychic phenomenon. She replies with the very sound point that real life and nature can often be fantastical enough. She uses the case of Beethoven composing whilst deaf as one example, but it’s interesting when we consider the wealth of information that science is now uncovering about ourselves and the universe we live in. Biologists have come to realise that an organism can evolve significantly within its own lifetime but are only just beginning to unravel the secrets of the human genome and all its potential. Physicists have discovered the best evidence yet to prove the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle, showing we’re making huge leaps forward in terms of understanding our world, yet also illustrating just how much we still don’t know and just how much we are intimately connected to the micro and macro world around us. After all, atoms in our bodies were once at the hearts of stars burning away, stars which themselves came from one infinitesimally small point in existence, or perhaps, more correctly, non-existence. Put in this context, the spooky goings on in Red Lights are pretty lame.

It is perhaps worthy to note on the fact that filmmakers invariably portray the supernatural as a dark and sinister force, partly the essence of horror films, partly maybe our natural fear of the unknown. Yet, we as a species floating in space are so fragile that it would hardly take anything at all to wipe us out. Alien virus. Dead. Asteroid. Dead. Alien invasion by pretty much any alien species capable of space travel we can think of. Dead. Ghosts that can hurt people. Dead. (Like the ghosts in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ – why didn’t they just recruit them in the beginning? They’re indestructible! ‘Hmm, what do we have to bargain with… I suppose we have the only living being that can free them from eternal slavery. Hmm… or we could give the ring to two hobbits, take an enormous gamble, and sacrifice half of the population of Middle Earth. Decisions, decisions…’).

It might not be ridiculous to draw a conclusion from this that the universe is actually a fairly benevolent place for life, and that rather than waste time worrying about all the ways it could end, we should simply enjoy it. I suppose you could argue if it was really looking out for us we’d be impervious to disease and fire etc. but perhaps it likes us needing to look out for one another. To bring us back to the point, mental trickery of the sort going on here still very much remains science fiction to us, but who knows, in the future perhaps there will be a quantum understanding of the likes of deja vu as we unlock the mysteries of the mind, and just as once upon a time seeing a rainbow must have felt like seeing a snapshot of some godly realm, and we can now produce the same effect from a simple prism, perhaps one day seemingly improbable tricks of the mind will be child’s play.

The director has stated he wants ‘Red Lights’ to ask questions, and it does stay with you afterward quite well and linger on. However, this has more to do with the cast and the cinematography which succeed in creating a distinctive sense of something, but a something that is ultimately hollow and too ill defined by a randomly whimsical screenplay that is creative on its surface only. A film like this should have people wanting to see it again, armed with full knowledge of the story, but it’s let down by an underlying structure simply not crafted well enough to ever allow it to work on the grand scale it aims at. Decent, but a shame it isn’t better.

iLL Manors  (2012)    52/100

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Rating 52/100                                                                         121 Min        18

iN Brief : A pretty decent addition to the canon of modern British gangster films, but one massively let down by a false premise and a sickeningly ludicrous plot decision towards the end.

Contents:
mINI Review
pLOT
fULL Review (contains spoilers)

mINI Review : iLL Manors appears in cinemas as the days count down to the London Olympic games. Set in Forest Gate, the Olympic park looms in the distance as we follow the story of multiple characters in the area through their dark world of narcotics and gangland culture. In true modern gangster film style, all of their stories begin to interlink and though some of the story is engaging, there is the distinct feeling of seeing exactly what we expected to before going in. It fails spectacularly to raise any sort of agenda. With even people in good jobs being forced out of areas like Forest Gate, as their rent is increased astronomically for the games, and no mention of this or any other socio-economic factor relating to the underprivileged of today, it’s an opportunity missed. If you have enjoyed British gangster films in the past, there is no reason you won’t like this. Nevertheless, Ben Drew has to have a very deep rethink of his strategy if he wants to adhere to his mission statement, and use the art form of film to redefine the class system in Britain. If anything, such fare can only entrench it further.

pLOT : People holding various positions in the London criminal fraternity go about their daily business. Meanwhile, some of the local youngsters are trying to break into the gangs, whilst others are trying to leave them.

fULL Review (contains spoilers) : iLL Manors is Ben Drew’s directorial debut. Who is Ben Drew, I hear you ask? He also goes by the professional moniker of Plan B. Who is Plan B? I hear most of you still cry. He is a rapper who has been on the circuit for a few years now and who has enjoyed limited chart success, having occasionally strayed into the UK top ten. The I.M.D.B. also reliably states he played one of the main hooligans in ‘Harry Brown’ (09) pitted against Michael Caine’s housing estate pensioner, and also had bit parts in both Noel Clarks ‘Adulthood’ (08) and ‘4..3..2..1’ (10) (if memory serves he was a jealous ex-lover in the latter who made comment regarding his successor having a larger male appendage than himself, perhaps indicating he’s OK with not taking himself too seriously).

Most movie goers will probably recognise him from the irritating Hewlett-Packard ads that have been playing before the trailers in cinemas. In these ads we are to believe Plan B is already highly successful, and it feels a little forced. Similarly the trailer for his first film at the helm describes him as a ‘visionary’, and herein lies the most immediate problem with iLL Manors. A gangster film, set in London, written and directed by a London rapper. Hmm. Is this really going to appeal to a wide audience? The British cinema viewing public will be pretty familiar with the regular appearance of British gangster films, invariably set in London, previously normally featuring Danny Dyer until he suggested it’s a good idea to scar the face of your ex-girlfriend so that no one else will want her (though his publisher Bauer Media did admit ‘an extremely regrettable production error’ had taken place and Dyer was adamant he had been misquoted, the damage was nevertheless done), and now quite often with Adam Deacon in the credits somewhere instead. These films will feature hip hop/rap music, a high percentage of black cast members, an abundance of swearing, drugs, and a reasonably high mortality rate. This is the modern template for the British gangster film, perhaps worryingly almost a cult genre in its own right.

There are exceptions of course, films that belong to the group but that add a little more originality to it, such as the aforementioned ‘Harry Brown’, the ending of ‘The Veteran’ (11) with Toby Kebbell, Dexter Fletcher’s recent ‘Wild Bill’ (11), but your average punter could well be forgiven for thinking this particular outing into the field will simply yield more of the same, with the only exception being it will also act as a vehicle for Plan B’s music. However, armed with the knowledge that Plan B released the single iLL Manors prior to the film, with the subject matter of the English riots of 2011 and, as he puts it, “society’s failure to nurture its disadvantaged youth/yoof,” we already have this set out to be a little different from the normal gangster fare. Especially since Drew has suggested the film and the single are the beginnings of a movement, led by himself, to address the class system in Britain. How then does the film actually bear up?

Not terribly well. Certainly not for the first third or so, where we are flung into the world of drug dealing gangsters, pretty much all of whom seem to be black, in what appears to be Drew’s own home turf of Forest Gate in London. We are introduced to a variety of characters, all different facets of the same prism, and some of the narrative is told via rap by Plan B, effectively rendering much of this dialogue indecipherable. Eventually there is a mention of ‘David Cameron’s Britain’. This is the first and last attempted link to any kind of social agenda, other than showing a fictional snapshot of what it might be like to be a drug dealing scumbag. And let’s be honest, the vast majority of the characters here are scumbags, with little to no room for sympathy or empathy from the audience. This, together with the soundtrack and story told via the director’s own rap, has the effect of suggesting this is more about the career of Plan B than anything else, of giving the appearance he is trying to appeal and ‘look cool’ to his target audience rather than comment on a larger social agenda, and that he is quite willing to use the banner of a social crusader for a misunderstood demographic to further entrench the music-culture-stereotypes-money in his pocket symbiotic relationship, feeding the loop whilst attempting to be a self professed hero to a generation of people that probably take a good deal of their vocabulary and mannerisms from music and film.

It’s a massive wasted opportunity. J.K.Rowling has made comment that she is always amazed at someone who cannot see the relationship between crime and poverty. With a view to the upcoming climax of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, in ‘Batman Begins’ (05) this theme is completely central to the story, and Bruce Wayne himself admits to losing many preconceptions about criminals when he is forced to steal food to survive after abandoning his name and fortune for a time. The current ruling political coalition of the United Kingdom have introduced changes to the welfare state, as part of their ‘austerity’ measures, that have seen the poorest and most vulnerable people in society left with nothing. Those without any other support network are increasingly being left with little choice other than to turn to crime, or beg, in order to survive. Mostly this will lead to a criminal record, making it increasingly unlikely to find normal employment and encouraging an endlessly downward spiral. On the back of these changes, England last year experienced the worst rioting of the modern era. The government backlash was to hit the perpetrators hard, someone who stole a pack of cigarettes received a lengthy custodial sentence for example, circa nine months, and a big deal was made in the media that the majority of the people involved had previous convictions. No doubt there were a great many opportunists and ‘hoodlums’, but equally there were probably those who were simply sick of being treated like animals and of having no democratic voice or, as far as they are concerned, choice. The driving force for these changes is the Conservative party who have effectively silenced their politically weak partners the Liberal Democrats for the time being, and who are doing a very impressive job of conforming to their centuries old stigma of being a party for the rich. There may be a sinister undertow to all of this, in that in the minds of the wealthy if you are poor, then you are a criminal, or at the least you soon will be. Indeed, the case has been made that if you are in jail you in many ways actually have more rights than if you are unemployed.

Indeed, job seekers currently have the pleasure of watching their section of the welfare state being privatised. Meaning that they have to deal with private companies who are being paid tax payers money to effectively cheapen the lives of the poor, forcing them to do demeaning and often pointless tasks in order to receive state benefits and commonly forcing them to work for the equivalent of two pounds something an hour. The thinking behind this is that’s it’s good for the poor to be told what to do as they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves otherwise. In reality an unworkable and corrupt environment is created that sees agencies profit, while thousands of people fall through the cracks and become destitute, and for the ones that don’t they have to endure the humility of being denigrated to nothing more than slave labour as there are aren’t enough jobs to go around, while the government continues to make it easier and easier for employers to lay off staff. Indeed, one of the private companies used in these schemes, A4e, are themselves being investigated under charges of fraud by the police, their head having resigned over the charges but not before netting herself a bonus of millions. This individual, prior to disgrace, was the government’s top advisor on unemployment. By the same token people put under the cosh by the state have to watch as bankers and the heads of other big businesses award themselves personal bonuses of millions, even though it was their own greed that caused the world recession in the first place. On a similar vein, there has been a particularly vehement attack on disability benefit that seems to have been started with the premise that most people on it are fraudsters. The end result is a huge backlog of complaints and appeals that the medical profession are expecting to be largely upheld, after many of society’s most vulnerable have been harassed and labelled as criminals. iLL Manors then could have been a double reference to the harsh realities of poverty stricken disadvantaged housing estates, together with the political ignorance and indifference of the actual manors of the richest in society.

Despite this heavy, target rich backdrop, iLL Manors has the one line with the mention of David Cameron, and that’s the full extend of its political content. The rest is just another gangster film. The bulk of the narrative follows the parallel between two characters. One, a youngster looking to score some weed and perhaps break into the social network of the area’s resident gang, but who is quickly used and led down a spiral of increasing violence, and another young man (Rhiz Ahmed) who is already a part of the local criminal fraternity, but who appears to be of a generally kind nature and who eventually tries, and succeeds, to get away from the lifestyle he was born into. The message of the film from this point of view is at least very clear.

Also to the film’s credit, is the introduction of characters suffering from forced prostitution. Sex grooming and slavery has been a huge problem in Europe’s biggest cities for a long time, and it is good to see a film reflecting this as British law also begins to buck a trend that previously seen seventy five percent of police forces around the country effectively turn a blind eye to the problem, their cited difficulty often being convincing the abused women, commonly girls, to testify. Similarly, showing two young kids from the neighbourhood lured into a dealer’s flat under promise of a ‘modelling’ prospect, and then being introduced to crack, highlights an all too common criminal problem. After about forty minutes or so these elements creep in and begin to make the film more interesting, though this does also coincide with less story telling rap. As a stand alone gangster film the whole then shapes up nicely, nicely that is until a certain incident. Red Dragon would like to categorically state that it is never acceptable to drop a baby out of a second story window. Especially when you then have someone catch it in a towel on the ground below and it’s completely fine. It’s pretty horrific to watch. Not to mention completely unbelievable, filmed as it is. Thrown from a room filled with smoke, but not yet with fire, could the perpetrator not have perhaps sat on the window ledge and waited for help instead? Surely there would have been enough air? The perps subsequent fall from the ledge and death would seem to paint him as a hero in the end, as if underneath he’s actually alright, but this is entirely at odds with every single other aspect of his character leading right up to that point.

The direction overall is fine, with some experimental elements creeping in, such as splitting the frame into multiple views. ‘Hulk’ (03) was slated for this, but the practise goes back much further, Peckinpah’s ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’ (70), as one example. Similarly the ensemble cast do a convincing job of playing heavies and dealers, though more than a few pieces of dialogue could have done with being re-recorded. There is a consistent message of violence begetting violence, which is to the film’s credit, and similarly characters straying into the underworld of gangs and drugs do end up being hurt. With possibly the most immediate example in film history when one of the young innocent girls decides to try crack, then receives a fatal bullet to the chest seconds later.

Not bad, but the potential to make a bold statement and stand out from the crowd has been wasted completely.