Gassed Up

Great film making... gorgeous colours and scenes. Young talent is incredible and I'm sure these actors will be seen again. Story kept me interested all the way through and had a fresh new movie making feel.

Ash stands out as the protagonist with a genuine connection that the viewer gains as the film progresses. I laughed, winced and sympathised with him. The story aims to highlight successfully, the various struggles that people live through including seeking asylum, substance abuse, cost of living, involvement in crime and how this inevitability progresses with characters that are believable and live through difficulties that lead them to these decisions.. good and bad.

"Ash" (Stephen Odubola) lives at home with his young sister and his permanently absent or stoned mother. His dream is to start a business of his own (he likes to fix things) and to get her into rehab. To that end he's mixed up with four of his mates in a snatch 'n grab scheme using mopeds to pinch mobile phones and handbags from unsuspecting folks on the street. They sell these on to "Shaz" (Jelena Gavrilovic) who happens to be the cousin of the gang's leader "Dubz" (Taz Skylar). "Ash" finds the shoebox under his bed is gradually filling up, but when he's told his mother's medical costs are likely to run to £25,000 he realises that nicking a few phones ain't going cut it. After a raid to get themselves some new transport goes awry, with one of their number a bit too handy with the spray-on acid, they are reduced to four and given a new task. Rob a jewellery store and make some proper money. When this goes tragically wrong, "Ash" and his pals "Kabz" (Mohammed Mansaray) and "Mole" (Tobias Jowett) have to persuade their briefly ostracised mate "Roach" (Craige Middleburg) to come back and help them - because their paymasters are still demanding a sackful of loot! Up until this point, the film is actually quite decent - a diverse group of life-long mates all carrying out what they reckon are victimless crimes to make some cash. Once the violent elements kick in, though, the plot really heads south. What made it a bit different is subsumed into a rather amateurishly directed affair with implausible police chases, even more unlikely robbery scenarios and just one chunk too much of bad decision making - on and off the screen. Skylar is a man with charisma, but the rest of these characters never light up the screen or the story and by the sequel-suggesting conclusion, I'd sort of lost interest. It is worth a watch with all the "life's there for the taking" stuff going on, but it'll be on the television soon enough and I'm sure it can wait til then.

The film is boring and predictable, the main character is awful and stupid , some of the lesser gang members were more memorable than the lead who blunders from one crisis to another. You never really root for him or feel sorry for him, he neglects his family although the film makers are trying to make him some sort of underdog hero fighting for them. He gets many chances to sort his life out but he never does the right thing and just makes mistake after mistake , a frustrating film with no ending. Was hoping for some sort of twist but it never happens. The film is too slow and nothing really happens until the last 15 mins, it's trying to build up the characters but falls far short. Utterly forgettable and should have gone straight to streaming.

WHY do we keep giving any air time to this type of scutter life mentality and act like we should care if a single one of the characters does anything but wind up in a gutter or dead.

The storyline is Drama school level predictable with possibly the worst overacting you'll witness outside of WWE. The main character casting is so bad it's almost comical and you're rooting for him to get finished off in every exchange that happens which I assume is the opposite of what they were aiming for and the same goes for the equally unlikable side characters - although they at least dont freak out like a school girl at every turn of a corner.

Over egged 'waste man' style scripting is painful to have to sit through and if anyone talks like that in real life then I'd be questioning how many times they've bounced their head off a toilet seat while trying to pull up their pants half way up their legs before shuffling back off to "tell fam bout da stink in da poop room init'

Unless you're trying to learn how to not act or how to stereotype a race of people so badly that you'd be ashamed to watch them if they were your own family then I'd give this one a wider birth than you'd give StankPants as he leaves the toilet ..... Ya Get Me Fam Ting Init Bruv.

Start watching at 1h and 10 mins. You won't miss nothing I promise you. No character build up, unrealistic I mean where was everybody with their mobile phones in the air, taking Instagram selfies at the rave. Haha.

3 out of 10 for the little bit you get at the end.

Should be able to post shorter reviews because I really have nothing good to say about this. So I'll give you an idea of the dialogue just to waste the last 108 characters required to complete my review.

Know' what I mean bro innit. Bro, bro, bro, bro my fam. Did I miss anything oh hang on... Bro, oh and bro. Innit!!!!!

Urghhhh.