In and around the council estates of London a multicultural group of friends hang around and get about their business the best way they can. Alex, Tom, Matt and Ravi all do drugs and move small quantities as well as being involved in various other illegal activity. With Matt's mum away for the weekend, the plan is to throw a party at his house, with plenty of drugs and hip hop for their friends. However a run-in with some white thugs in the afternoon and the activities of Ravi's mate Kalig threaten to disrupt the day-to-day existence of the group.
There are many interesting tales behind the making of this film and it is not fair to talk about it in any way without considering at very least how it was made. Writer and director Hall came up with the film as a reflection of the life he was living. The application for money to make the film was rejected by the Film Council and so the film was made for a budget of less than £4k, most of it borrowed from family and friends. Filming without official permissions in the most part the film used a small crew and inexperienced actors to make this. It premiered on the internet but it did win an award from Mike Leigh that has brought it more of an audience (although not much). It did help that the BBC showed it (and several other very low budget films) as part of its summer of British films recently.
The low budget does show but I mean that in the nicest possible way. The DV footage gets us close to the action and feel like it is realistic but it just isn't that pretty looking. The production standards I can understand and I had no problem with it but I did have a issue with the plotting. I like films that are close to reality and natural but for me you have to try and work a plot into that rather than having them as two separate threads of the same film, which is what it seemed had happened here. So on one hand we gets plenty of interesting "hanging around and stuff happens" scenes but then on the other we have the main plot about the police closing in on the group over fraud and theft, leading to a significant impact at the end. The actual plot doesn't flow that well and indeed is poorly delivered at the end but the naturalistic scenes are engaging in their rough and ready realism. Fortunately the closest I have ever gotten to the world of this film was living in Witton in Birmingham and hanging around with people from Ladywood but from my limited experience it all rings true and a lot is recognisable for what it is.
The acting is also rough and ready and it seems to depend on the scene. The difference is quite obvious at times. Scenes where the focus is naturalism then the cast get to just be themselves and adlib well. However when they are handed scenes required to fit into the narrative, some of them become a bit more clunky and wooden. Hall's direction is good and I will be interested to see anything he does after this on the basis of the potential (and drive) that he has shown here.
Overall then a film of strengths and weaknesses some of which are both at the same time. Specifically the film is best in its naturalistic and rough depiction of life on London's housing estates but the narrative arch seems like an afterthought and much more could have been made of it and the film would have been significantly better for it.
