With an opening sequence copied from DISTRICT 13 and an entire storyline and setting copied from KIDULTHOOD, there's nothing remotely original about SHANK. It juts and jumps all over the place, telling a storyline of revenge and brotherhood that's been done to death a zillion times already. It makes you feel like this particular genre of gritty, London-set gangster film is dead in the water, although a film came along a year later that proved there was still life in the genre yet: I'm talking about 2011's ATTACK THE BLOCK, of course.
Sadly, SHANK is nothing like ATTACK THE BLOCK. The script is dead-headed stupid, the characters clichéd and the frenzied editing actually nausea-inducing. The obnoxious leading characters are repulsive in the extreme and their quest to undertake revenge seems to go absolutely nowhere; by the time the film ends, absolutely nothing has happened to any of them. There are no character arcs whatsoever.
I don't know what's worse, actually: Paul Van Carter's wannabe-hip script or Mo Ali's drug-addled direction. Put together they provide a nauseating example of all that's wrong with British cinema when a successful film comes along and the inevitable rip-offs follow.
