Us and Them

Intriguing little scocio-polical movie that reminded me of the early works of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. It's a little brutal at times and quite funny at other's, and it is well acted. Not great but not terrible, it's okay for a Netflix selection.

Very contemporary for our times. Dark humour. You would be left confused as to which side of the debate you are on. Riveting.

Film school grads who want to do crime thrillers should look to Huston, Hitchcock and Don Siegel as much as they look to Ritchie and Tarantino. This is a triumph of slo-mo, shock cuts and lousy dialogue over genuinely intriguing content. A putative class-warfare underpining is the excuse for torture and mayhem. There is vistually no humor here at all, espceially for a theoretic "dark comedy". The acting is fairly good, I'd like to see the cast with a decent script and director. But this waste of time and talent ain't it.

Tries too hard to be cruel and funny .Not a bad effort in parts , copies alot off lock , stock and A Clockwork Orange. Could of been great but ends up being poor.

"It's called class war for a reason," says Danny (Jack Roth). "There has to be victims on both sides."

Us and Them represents that class warfare with a mixture of Straw Dogs and Tarantino. You're right; it's a bloody business with Danny and his two working-class goons invading a Brit upper-class home to seek redress for the social injustices of the 1% taking from the blue-class stiffs for the upper crust's advantage.

But there's also ample humor in the invaders stumbling over themselves, Marx Bros. and Marx style, to pull off a mostly ill-conceived invasion (a BB gun??). Heading this gang that can't shoot straight is Roth's superb performance as the tough but conflicted Danny. It's an amusing and sardonic and poignant satire.

Given he's Tim Roth's son, not only can we expect a performance so gritty as to immediately reveal he has no acting school to weigh him down. (Also, he reminds me of the versatile Jack Plotnick, whose talents extend from acting to writing and directing as well.)

Besides Roth's presence are the stylized set-ups and performances perfected by Guy Ritchie and the sardonic asides of Quentin Tarantino's rough-hewn tough guys. Kudos to writer/director Joe Martin for catching Brit blue collar frustrations and the unfathomable gulf between the wealthy and the rest of the world's blokes.

Although Us and Them plays to the global divide between the haves and the have-nots, it goes much deeper to satirize the dangers of narrow extremism on either side of that divide.