Zebra Crossing

Zebra Crossing is a kinetic black and white film (with a touch of colour at the end.) It is inspired by the French Film La Haine (The Hate.)

It is set in tower blocks in South London and focuses on a group of young white men on the edge and fatalistic which the media will have us believe are unrepresented in British television or film.

My word they do seem to be the subject of a lot of low budget films. How about some films of young white men living in a council estate with a job and just doing their best to make something of themselves legitimately sometime this millennium?

These group of four young men are not nice. They are racist, homophobic, petty thieves and come to the attention of the police.

Right at the start we see them bashing two gay men, later inciting racial violence. They are on the verge of going to a dark path unchecked.

Tommy is the most wild, unpredictable and violent. Justin his best friend is excluded from college with a sick, disabled sister, a violent, drunk father and whose mother has abandoned them.

Justin seems to want out of the spiral and shows a sensitive side. He seeks solace in a church where he encounters a mysterious black man.

When the gang enter a world of hard drugs, drug dealing and later become skinheads the outcome looks bleak and divisions are exposed.

The film is kinetic and wild, especially the way it's edited but the debut director loses focus now and then and some of it does not make sense.

It does not help that the film lacks light, with so many not nice people, the viewer can be easily repulsed and offended by the actions of these men. However the main issue is that apart from a slice of life in a council tower block setting, the film does not offer much by way of a coherent story.