The Riot Club

I found it a really profound storyline. Meaningful. Colourful. A peak into the modern (and ancient) class divides in the UK. And now horrible rich peopls are.

I was captivated as I sat in terror through this movie. Shocked, not by violence, but by the attitude of the memebers of the Riot Club. The lack of empathy, care, humanity.

I enjoyed how the plot shifted and got me constantly guessing who is the antagonist and who's the protagonist. It was also a really beautiful movie. The cinematography was great, but not overly original.

Great acting from Sam Clafin.

But the greatness of this movie is the storyline. Its so good, striking and upsetting that I never want to watch it again.

The Riot Club is an exclusive hedonistic drinking club in Oxford University with a long tradition. The group needs two new members to complete the ten minimum. Alistair Ryle and Miles Richards are new students with connections. Miles starts a relationship with Lauren from the working class. Right winger Alistair gets mugged and then recruited into the group. Harry Villiers is an older member whose ancestor was the original Lord Riot. James Leighton-Masters is the group's president. Hugo Fraser-Tyrwhitt is Miles' former classmate. They weren't close but Hugo remembers Miles. Their annual dinner at a country restaurant causes mounting rowdiness and chaos.

These are entitled rich brats. None of them are that compelling as individual characters. Most of them are too interchangeable. Their hi-jinx are annoying and not particularly imaginative. It's a lot of drinking and destruction. Throwing in Natalie Dormer as a hooker does help. There is boring boorish talk and a couple of interesting moments. The scene with Lauren in the restaurant is wrong. It's excusable that Miles is drunk but Lauren is too slow on the uptick. Even then, Miles can't be that weak-minded. It makes no sense that he doesn't leave to chase after Lauren other than for the sake of the story. There are a few clunky moments. It's unbelievable that the guys don't do more than a night in the drunk tank. They walk out with their clothes which should be taken as evidence. The only way to make it all work is if the cops are bought off right away. The possibility is there but it's not sharp enough.

After an amusing introductory scene that informs you of the club's centuries' old origin, the film turns to contemporary Oxford and presents us with the latest generation of students and Riot Club members. It follows first-year students Miles Richards (Max Irons) and Alistair Ryle (Sam Claflin), both are of 'good stock' but the former is normal and down-to-earth and the latter is a malicious, fascistic sociopath.

During the fresher's activities, Miles quickly befriends the middle- class Lauren (Holliday Grainger), a friendly girl from Northern England; the romantic pair have a sweet naturalism as they playfully talk about and erode their differing heritages. The scowling, aloof Alistair however proves to be not much of a conversationalist.

Both are soon inaugurated into the Riot Club, whose other members include Harry Villiers (Douglas Booth), the pretty boy who struck me as the de-facto leader of the club; Hugo Fraser-Tyrwhitt (Sam Reid), a closet homosexual with an attraction to Miles; Dimitri Mitropolous (Ben Schnetzer), a horribly rich Greek student, and James Leighton- Masters (Freddie Fox), the smug little squirt who's somehow the president of the club. Some have said that it is littered with caricatures, however the film isn't about ordinary Oxford students or ordinary privilege, it is about an elite circle of extreme wealth and aristocracy.

After Miles and Alistair make up the Riot Club's ten members, the group soon have their risibly pompous suits tailored and set off for a night's debauchery to The Old Bull, one of the few establishments they haven't been banned from. By the time this happens, I thought I had the measure of the pretentious characters and the film's narrative and tone, however as the 'dinner' progresses, both the characters and the course of events become veritably loathsome.

As most will know, The Riot Club is inspired by the Bullingdon Club, an Oxford University dining society infamous for its destructive hedonism that boasts alumni such as David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne. The film's main target of attack isn't the purported anti-social behaviour of such people, the obnoxious decadence we witness is not endemic to the highly disagreeable 'Riot Club', what it attacks is rather the characters' raging, blue-blooded superiority complexes that causes it. Some may disagree with its politics, they may consider it a gross exaggeration; it is indeed vehement in its depiction of class wars, however I think it is undeniably a very well executed piece of filmmaking.

The film is adapted from the stage play Posh by Laura Wade, and the middle section of the narrative, which is one long scene, certainly feels like the work of a playwright. Like Tracy Letts' Killer Joe (2011) and Bug (2006), it is another example of how punchy stage material often makes an excellent transfer to the cinema.

Much like Letts' work, The Riot Club contains a maelstrom within a cramped four walls; the scene goes from embarrassing to plain excruciating as the decuplet, fuelled by alcohol, drugs and each other's presence, become increasingly hateful and immoral, the vile crescendo eventually reaching a climax that's genuinely shocking. It is all witnessed by the unassuming pub landlord. He is initially honoured to host the boys, the sight of him sycophantically at the beck and call of people half his age who look at him the way they would dog mess on their shoe is pathetic in the true meaning of the word.

The worst offender is Alistair, Sam Claflin is excellent when delivering his well-written diatribes with drunken, acerbic hatred. Alistair's genocidal contempt for the working classes and those bereft of prestige bore similarities to Adolf Hitler's loathing of Jews; he gets so angry that he's reduced to saying 'I'm sick to f*cking death of poor people!' Alistair is the most odious example of unearned privilege and arrogant sense of entitlement, he rants about the successes and innovations of the ruling classes and the proletariat's supposed jealousy as if he's had a part in it, after all, what exactly has he achieved apart from winning the genetic lottery? Claflin proves himself as an accomplished villain actor, he gives his character a sociopathic quality; when there aren't flashes of his vulgar jealousy, resentment and massive hubris, Alistair has an unnerving emotional vacuity.

The Riot Club is not simply 107 minutes of pretty boys holding champagne flutes, it is a sharply made thriller that is perhaps politically divisive but rivetingly executed.

The Riot Club is for posh boys, who all attend Oxford university. There are only ten of them at a time and they have a notorious reputation, and best of all? They are looking for new members. So I suppose the reel question is will this be Dirty Pretty Things or just Filth? The Riot Club is a film that has a feeling of disappointment, not from me, but from itself, it feels like a movie that had more to give us and wanted to but can never quite get into the right gear with it's own inner mechanics, it's a film that comes across as unhappy with it's own final piece.

The film has a lot of things going for it despite this, it has an INCREDIBLE cast of young men, the whole premise is pitched just right and when it needs to the tension is palpitatable, So why isn't it a better movie? I think we need to take a second look at this to get to the bottom of it properly.

The Riot Club begins as it means to go on, within the first 5 minuets we are shown hard drug use, strong sex scenes, violence and bad language, it never tries to hide or conceal what it is, but then I suppose this is where the problem starts because a movie like The Riot Club (much like A Clockwork Orange really), tries to live in two camps at once, those being the one of class commentary and the other of exploitation cinema. Nobody is going to defend The Riot Club for not being an exploitation film.

I think the thing that The Riot Club lacks most noticeably when compared to both the trailer and the general air of the film is ferocity. When I sat down to watch The Riot Club I expected darkness and debauchery, and what I ended up getting was something mildly unsettling, sure there are flurries of vindictiveness in the film, but they are in the trailer. I wanted to see a film that would justify the tenseness that I felt during some of the periods of the movie, but instead what I came out with was a feeling of confusion to what the hell happened to it all.

The Riot Club works perfectly to a pint, and then during the third act totally loses its way and decides it's run out of time anyway, so brings everything to a screeching halt almost mid flow. That is a crime I can't forgive, to deny me a justified ending to a film I was largely enjoying is wrong.

I feel it goes without saying that film has a superior showing of young up and comers, but what I feel should be said is that aside from the main male dominated teens, there is a surprising mix of other actors and actresses too, this is always a welcomed surprise.

At times The Riot Club is funny, at times it's uncomfortable but it never reaches the depths it desires or needed to for me. The talents on display are strong and that's what lifts it above the mundane.

This is a typical gritty Film Four presentation. A look at the seedier side of society groups and making us look at a side of people that we like to believe doesn't exist really but deep down we know they do. Very gritty , very thought provoking watch this knowing that you will be shocked .

A secret Oxford University club where if you have to ask to join you can't be a member who are all from affluent backgrounds and think they are better than anyone beneath their social standing.

We see how the club begins from its origins to modern day with the group needing new recruits . We see the process and induction of the new members and quickly realise that they are raucous to the extreme. They are preparing to book the annual meal and have to leave Oxford and end up in a beautiful family orientated gastro pub.

As the drink flows and the drugs are consumed the behaviour of the group becomes excessive. A pre arranged prostitute refuses to co-operate which infuriates the members further.

A violent assault tests their loyalty to each other and is played out with the involvement of outside parties.