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Reviews
Outlaw (2007)
Another Nick Love film that has you looking at your watch
I watched this film a month ago so I've forgotten most of what happened in this potentially interesting exploration of the violent society we live in.
A group of men - all victims of violent crime, all let down by the British legal system, come together under Sean Bean's tough paratrooper to take the law into their own hands and wage war against a fierce drug dealer and his army of scroats.
Anyone who lives in London can understand the sense of aggression that runs through all of us, but we manage to suppress it and turn the other eye when confronted with an opportunity to take out our anger.
Outlaw brings our vigilante fantasies to life, and I think this story would work as a novel, where a skilled writer could spin a better narrative on the characters' motivations and develop a stronger plot to create an exciting journey of people defying their moral compass to make a better tomorrow.
The film starts well but loses credibility quite quickly after Sean Bean suddenly turns his assortment of nervy and out-of-shape misfits into fighting machines who can beat up gangsters and fire guns like skilled soldiers.
Why is Bob Hoskins in this film? Is he on the Nick Love bandwagon to pedal cinematic propaganda of what good guys criminals are in an attempt to normalise their lifestyles? Hoskins seems to be the only honest cop in the city but how the paedo' gangster found out he was involved in the failed attempt on his life is never explained and you're left thinking, "er, what?".
Maybe it was just a plot device to bring the Outlaw's downfall? The dirty cops protecting the targeted drug dealer pin Bob's death on Sean Bean, who flies into a rage and disbands his pathetic band of men.
The funniest scene in this film is when moments after Sean Bean has been broadcast as a wanted man with military experience, he's found sitting in a pub dressed in his army gear.
Sean isn't alone for long, as two of the Outlaws (Danny Dyer and Lennie James) decide normal life is no longer for them and the mission to kill a drug dealer is their future.
I'll stop here as I don't want to ruin the end for those who manage to resist hitting the stop button after thirty minutes. I can't help but think about old Cracker episodes and wonder if Nick Love had followed that successful paradigm, would he have made a film that explored the human psyche to a greater success?
One thing that did bother me: if the Flying Squad is supposed to deal with commercial armed robberies, why are they investigating murders and drug dealers?
The Business (2005)
Not a great reflection of British talent
Although the lads' magazines applauded Nick Love's story of Costa del crime in the Eighties, the biggest surprise for me was that when the credits finally rolled, only 97 minutes had passed.
Danny Dyer plays south-London wideboy Frankie who wants to escape his grimy surroundings and be somebody. When he kills his mum's abuser, a connected wiseguy offers him a new life in Spain. All he has to do is deliver a parcel to a 'friend' and keep his eyes and mouth shut.
Charlie (Tamer Hassan), a notorious gangster on the run from the law takes Frankie under his wing and shows him the high life of all night parties and countless women. At first, Frankie resists crossing over to the dark side of crime, but the thought of going back to nothing puts him on the path to destruction.
Dyer delivers his full acting repertoire of cheek, street smart and confused conscience, as he moves from wannabe to major player in the drug trade. Trying to emulate Goodfellas (1990) by having the actor narrate his journey is a major stumbling block. Voiceovers should be used sparingly and having to hear what we're already seeing is needless and eventually annoying.
There is a strong sense of realism in the portrayal of the London gangsters and the peroxide blondes who follow in their wake. None of them are likable and you believe that they wouldn't hesitate in blowing you away. The theme of greed and power tallies with the yuppie money grabbing decade, when cocaine became the major drug in the city bars and party circuits.
Frankie and Charlie are on top of the world but the classic gangster arc dictates that everything must come to an end. Their bond cast adrift Charlie's psychotic business partner Sammy (Geoff Bell), who can't handle being left out or the way Frankie looks at his girl Carly (Georgina Chapman). And when they move from cannabis to cocaine their political protection provided by the mayor is vanquished.
Drug dealing is all about hard cash and without it they're nothing. The message behind the film is that once you're set on the path of crime you don't want to get off. No matter what.
The musical score and style captures an 80's feel and Nick Love clearly has a Scorsese feeling of devotion and disgust for gangsters. Despite its foreign location, the Business sticks to its native roots and doesn't try to suggest that criminal life is made up of organised crime families with codes of honour.
Like Henry Hill and Tony Montana, the addiction of cocaine is too much to resist and their decline is mirrored by the constant snorts of the white powder. The climax has Frankie realising that Charlie is a has been and his future lies elsewhere, but first he has to do a deal with the devil - Carly the femme fatale - and see if he can come out alive and eventually be somebody.
Deuces Wild (2002)
A good film for the boys
It's the summer of '58 and a Brooklyn neighbourhood becomes a battlefield for two street gangs to settle old scores. Leon (Stephen Dorff) and Bobby (Brad Renfro) formed the Deuces after their little brother died from a hot dose of heroin,and vowed never to let the drug hit their streets again.
The lethal dose was supplied by the Vipers' leader Marco (Norman Reedus) who after three years' prison time, comes back to the neighbourhood to seek vengeance and get the powerful backing of mob boss Fritzy (Matt Dillon)to sell heroin on the streets.
Marco believes it was Leon who snitched to the police and the violence begins with a bloody fight in the park. Fritzy warns the hoodlums that no one gets hurt without his say so, but the hatred between the two gangs is deep and Marco attacking Leon's girlfriend (Drea de Matteo) forces the latter to take the Deuces into a battle they might not walk away from.
Kalvert plays safe with a location seen in many stories from a New York neighbourhood, with greased hair youths hanging outside pizzerias and the lido, talking about baseball and other anecdotes of their generation. This type of film always has me humming, "Lollipop, lollipop
" by the Chordettes, but despite some jazzed up MTV editing and library stock music to build up action scenes, you are drawn in to a story that teenage boys should love.
Dorff performs without any sign of an inflated ego and is superb as the street tough stuck between church and protecting his block. His fiery temper and flashes of violence are fuelled by the guilt he feels for his deceased brother. He's haunted by flashbacks of finding his corpse and his mother's anguish at seeing him walk through the streets cradling his lifeless body.
The tension between the gangs is heightened when Bobby starts dating Annie (Fairuza Balk), the sister of a Viper. This relationship borders on West Side Story (1961) territory, but both actors possess the ability not to deliver their declaration of passion like a soppy love poem. Renfro convinces as the impulsive younger brother wanting to get out of Leon's shadow and wage war against the Vipers. He is the narrator of the story, and therefore should be the lead actor, but the hero role is written for Leon and Renfro continually struggles to outshine the older actor.
Although Deuces doesn't have the boast of Robert De Niro directing, it is superior to A Bronx Tale (1993), in that it concentrates on the youths at war, rather than a portrayal of the neighbourhood wiseguys.
Dillon became famous as the youth with a tortured soul but shows little interest in offering his experience to the new generation of urban tales; seemingly stuck in auto-pilot as the pill-popping Mafioso whose greed leaves Leon staring death in the face.
Cashing in on the popularity of The Sopranos (1999) was a clever move, with Drea de Matteo as the standout performer from the heavily represented cast. While many of the actors in this film were watching their careers slide further away from the top level of American cinema; de Matteo further evidenced her progression from television to a respected film actress.
The final act sees the climatic fight between the Deuces and the Vipers,with the advantage continually changing, as double crosses and last minute rescues leaves you guessing who's going to come out on top. Life in a street gang rarely ends happily and the parting of the ways is inevitable for the Deuces.
If you are still young enough to remember the thrills of teenage rivalry and like your films to mix good fight scenes with angst and passion, then you should sit back and reminisce about your adolescent fantasy as the cool gang leader who didn't take sh*t from no one.
Kidulthood (2006)
The youth of today!!!!!!
What we have here is a gritty insight into the lives of some misunderstood youths from the 'hoodie culture' of today's London who, despite being from loving families, are intent to be a menace to society and inflict their anger of teenage angst on those closest to them.
Would this film have been made if it weren't for the recent success of television's Doctor Who is as big a question as whether this film should have been playing at school assemblies rather than cinemas? Noel Clarke (Mickey from Doctor Who) pens this 24-hour story of what a bunch of London school kids get up to when a beautiful girl from their class is bullied into suicide.
The protagonist is Trice a 15-year-old black boy with street cred' and a gangster for an uncle. Trice spends his time hitting the streets with his crew, but his obsession with his uncle begins to divide him from his friends.
These characters are supposed to be cutouts of the youth culture, and cardboard they certainly are, as their leader shows all the sensitivity of someone destined for Feltham Young Offenders, when Ali (his ex-girlfriend) has to tell him over the phone she's expecting his baby.
Part of his problem in responding to the news in this manner, is that the inciting incident has local tough Sam (Clarke) robbing his crew and claiming that he's been sleeping with Ali for weeks.
This leaves Trice mad and as the law-of-the-street states, vengeance always leads to more vengeance, until someone pays the ultimate price.
Ali is cast as the nice one, but masturbating a geeky associate of a drug dealer, just because her tarty best mate tells her it's fun is hardly a character flaw which endears you to her plight on deciding the future of her unborn child.
Kids are cruel, especially the ones you spend time with. In the build up to the final climatic scene of the big party, this becomes clear as the underlying hatred and two-faced bitching leaves all the kids asking questions of themselves and who they can trust.
The visuals of exploring mental anguish seem to continually happen in slow motion, with the director, Menhaj Huda, showing every textbook trick to try and invoke understanding for characters you hope will soon get the beating they deserve.
Too many split screens and pointless scenes make it a film only attractive for youths who live, or more pertinently, think they live, this rude boy culture. Its billing as a masterful portrayal of how it is in the urban teenage generation is a rightful claim, as youth-on-youth crime is a major problem and their intimidating behaviour leaves their peers and entire neighbourhoods in fear.
There are too many different aspects to what should be a simple story that it's difficult to establish what the film's message is. The big question being - do we care? Some may think this ranks alongside 'La Haine' (1995) as a story of young friends venting their anger at the law and a society which shuns them. Subtitles would certainly help, as the use of street lingo between characters leaves you wondering what the hell they are saying. If you can't understand them, how can you follow the film? Noel Clarke sells out to the old clichés of street films by having Trice realise crime is evil and uniting him with Ali, so the young lovers can give teenage parentage a go.
Unfortunately there is no happy ending with Sam delivering the fatal bat-wielding blow that leaves Trice in the arms of his friends and lover. The anti-hero's final breath is used to shout, "He isn't worth it" to the brother of the suicide girl who blames the evil Sam for her death.
If you want to compare this film to Thirteen (2003) or Boyz 'n' the Hood (1991) then you are wrong, as being real is not the same as making good entertainment about real issues. Let's leave this film with the crime prevention officers and secondary schools who are trying to keep our kids on the straight and narrow.
Out of Sight (1998)
Leaves you asking what if?
Director, Steven Soderbergh; George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn and Ving Rhames.
This cool submission of film noir is a love story on opposite sides of the law. A prison break brings together a successful but ultimately doomed bank robber with a federal marshal who lets nothing stand in the way of her job.
Jack Foley has spent half of his life behind bars and this escape for freedom is the one that's going to count. He can be that crook who does one last job and goes on to lead the good life. That is, until, Karen Sisco, armed with a shotgun and badge, walks into his world.
She is quickly disarmed and a hostage situation in the boot of a getaway car soon becomes a unique first date with the nervous chatter and charm of two people whose body language says this is the moment they've been waiting for.
The role of Jack Foley allowed Clooney to deliver a performance of style and substance and prove he's a feature film actor. His cool flick of a zippo lighter symbolises a man who lives life on the edge, clearly struggling with the fact that the chance of that one big score is decreasing with age.
Jennifer Lopez promised so much in this role as a woman whose dedication to the job has left her stuck in the dating game with hothead cops and FBI agents. She's a survivor in a man's world but when she finally finds that spark, her code of honour plays second fiddle to her search for real love.
This performance was pre J-Lo and suggests that if the 37-year-old actress could have been prevented from chasing the mission of urban cool, she may have delivered other well-rounded performances and developed into a leading actress for the higher echelon of dramatic cinema.
The characters' desire for one another and their respective professions make the pursuit for justice a thrilling and sexy series of brief interludes in a range of seasonal locations across America.
Soderbergh excels in his direction, especially the 'Time Out' scene where he bends time and space to splice talky seduction and silent disrobing episodes together into something much more intimate than any mere sex scene.
The style of Elmore Leonard is evident in the script as it flashes back to Foley's time in prison: he becomes involved in a diamond heist on a dirty banker's home, which leads to the inevitable double cross by Don Cheadle's violent gangster, Snoop.
The friendship of trust between Clooney and his accomplice Buddy, played by Ving Rhames, works on the understanding that through bad luck or conflicts of conscience they have wasted the best part of their lives in prison and this one last heist presents an opportunity, despite their cynicism, to get their hard earned ticket to happiness.
A story of circumstance that asks if things were different, if we had followed a different path, how would things be? Foley can't face another prison stretch but can't change who he is and in a moment with Karen, he declares what meeting her has done to him: "It's like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it." The chance encounters and romantic rendezvous come to an end when Foley's conscience betrays him and by going back to the scene of the diamond heist, he saves a woman from Snoop's gang, but puts himself in Karen's gun sight. What if she wasn't a federal marshal? What if he wasn't a bank robber? What if?