Small Time

Glorious mini-feature from the extraordinary Shane Meadows, which shows up the amiable, timid amateurishness of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS for what it is. It has been the stated aim of directors like Scorcese and Tarantino to demythologise the gangster, to expose him as a mundane, pathetic human being, but it never works. Maybe the style is too vivid, maybe the iconography is too strong, but the gangsters in GOODFELLAS or PULP FICTION are vibrant, vital, even likeable, motors of these films, and it is their wit and inventive opportunism we remember, not their sticky ends.

British cinema has had an easier time in deglamorising its gangsters, probably because the Krays et al are not very glamorous in the first place. They're seedy, brutal, unstylish, stupid, resolutely unexotic (US gangsters are generally Italian, a compelling, operatic founding myth to start with). Very often British films go the opposite direction, creating relentless narratives of grim, unloveable violence.

SMALLTIME doesn't take either tack. Like Olivier Assayas, Meadows 'just' films a group of ordinary people as they live, people like those you probably know, or might even be yourself. They're just a bunch of lads, living on their wits, mucking about, having a laugh, drinking, talking (not in the impossibly clever manner of Tarantino characters), brawling, having problems with their girlfriends. This could be anyone from a certain strata in British society: they just happen to be petty criminals.

Petty is certainly the word. Much of the comedy comes from the very 'small time' nature of their activities. These are not the meticulously planned heists of US cinema: in one hilarious scene, they try to steal dog food, are confronted with an unexpected and bewildering array of choice, and not realising that they don't have to climb over a back-wall door to get the stuff; in another, they actually rob a car-boot sale! The main 'heist' is a sublimely bungled attack on a massage parlour, just because its owner made fun of the Begbie-style psycho, Jumbo.

Actually, it's that scene, where Jumbo's childhood friend, a wonderfully weak-willed Paul Calf-alike, who is being constantly harrassed by his girlfriend to leave his wideboy mates, and goes with her to this masseur's house, that is the film's triumph, a masterpiece of Mike Leigh social comedy. What begins as exquisite awkwardness develops into a hilarious massage between the two men, a genuinely burgeoning relationship, and ends with a hurt Jumbo intruding, betrayed, aggressive, humiliated by the masseur.

For all its comedy, the film is a dark work, and Meadows doesn't flinch from showing the casual brutality of this world, especially in the character of Jumbo, played by the director himself. For all his macho bravado, he can't satisfy his missus, who resorts to (very funny) furtive engagements with a vibrator. His aggression begins as comic, and ends in disturbing (though unseen) violence, and it is his focal presence that prevents the film from slipping into mere patronising observation.

This doesn't mean that SMALLTIME is filmed with boring, typically British, naturalism. The casual, seemingly improvisatory air conceals style which is revelatory and supremely controlled - highly stylised, bringing out through colour and odd composition, the genuinely surreal in everyday life; cool, remote, often in long-shot, allowing for critical distance (close-ups are rare); but also, through editing and handheld camera, giving a real sense of being in the thick of the action, sharing the characters' highs and lows.

This doesn't deserve a 1 rating but it's as low as I can give here. It isn't even a film - it looks like it was shot with one camcorder, and with zero artistic ability. Why it was made and how it got released is one of the great mysteries of modern times.

If there was a script - which I doubt - it was probably written by a monkey with a typewriter, and then destroyed in a mysterious shed fire. I don't think there is a single actor in the film, and most of the dialogue (or gibberish) appears to be improvised.

No attempt has been made to create characters or a plot. It doesn't tell us anything about the people, the places, the situations ... need I go on? It's just random and boring camcorder footage of strange people in weird clothes and wigs.

So what is the point? I have no idea. Should you watch it? No.

The other reviews amaze me. Didn't they see the terrible wigs and hammy local college of performing arts acting. The characters appear to have been purchased as a past-their use-by date job lot from Stereotypes-R-Us. Harry Enfields scouser family, appearing on TV around the time this was made, are actually MORE believable as real people. This is partly due to the hideous legacy that is British DRAMA ACTING. From the days of Laurence Olivier right through to the BBC dramas of today there is the received wisdom of the correct way to act. The acting in this film is like watching performing arts students having their first go at trying on wigs and costumes in order to portray the poor but resilient folk of the forgotten council estate. It would appear that the script, too, was written by the council. Maybe the whole film was a council film. It certainly looked and felt like it. Like others, I enjoyed This Is England, which is the nearest Meadows has got to being a shadow of Ken Loach, and Dead Man's Shoes had some good moments (but a stupid ending). However, this, admittedly early, effort is poor and doesn't deserve the good reviews given by the few people who were brave enough to sit through the whole thing. This is not the worst ever use of a BFI grant but it is among the worst portrayals of life on a council estate that relies heavily on wigs and stereotypes.

This the 'diamond in the rough' in British cinema and will be given a new chance to shine later on this year with its re-release on DVD in February. The Limited distribution and rarity of VHS copies has meant this film is a cult classic within an already small group of fans. Made on a shoestring budget using friends and family as cast you could ask no more from this film. If it was only for better backing this would be at worst equal to Trainspotting as a definitive British film of the decade.The comedy is enough to sprout a TV series alone. This film is the christening effort of Britain most talented director who has gone on to prove with Romeo Brass and Dead Mans shoes that it wasn't a fluke.

The little operation the leads in Shane Meadows' 1996 film Small Time head up is referred to by one of them as a "family business", but we're a long way from The Godfather territory here, as the crime ridden lives and antagonistic relations that are shared between those close to one another in and around a designated zone come to form the nucleus of a crime film you feel is about people whom might actually exist. Meadows' film is an ambitious piece, the debut film from someone whom has since gone on to produce far more accomplished work but here manages to etch out the best of an amateur cast asked to perform well above their capabilities whilst working within what appears to be the constraints of a minimal budget with which invention and a fair degree of style is implemented upon the piece. The film eventually comes to resemble something more interesting as a retrospective piece; the witnessing of a film-maker planting the foundations of a career in a film you wouldn't even be watching had you not already been aware of him.

Small Time somewhat successfully balances the elements of comedy, crime and genre non-specific character based realism; the film is relatively funny in rather-a blackish manner, the essence of the Dogma movement certainly prominent at certain times with the sense of a man feeling his way into feature film-making simultaneously subscribing to a kitchen-sink approach additionally feeling prominent. Its primary interest is to tell a tale about a handful of lowlifes just living in England; living in their houses, with the friends and lovers in and around, doing what they do. The film's branching off into causality driven territory within the crime genre when the robbing of an establishment becomes the focus is a jump Meadows doesn't quite manage as effectively as he would later come to do so in something like 2006's This is England; a film portraying a hostile and pent-up world from the perspective of a grieving youngster whom becomes more deeply involved with a gang of youths. The trick there seeing Meadows paint the initial exchanges with those in the gang as carefree and fun, the lead developed friends and began to enjoy life again before a distinct turn into a more bleaker realm reared its head.

The clan are made up of a group of people in their late twenties, early thirties; the primary two of whom are Malc, played by once-Meadows regular Mat Hand and Jumbo, who's played by Meadows himself. At home, their women banter with one another and suffer from frustrations born out of the relationships they have with their neighbours and the volatile relationship Ruby (Kawecka) has with Jumbo. The Nottingham based crew are not the brightest nor the sharpest, the kinds of people whom go out of their way to carefully calculate the stealing of a load of dog-food from the rear of a store before making it all the way to the getaway vehicle only to begin arguing in the middle of the street over how old you need to be to obtain an HGV licence. In their own words, and echoing what a certain infamous individual from the very city in which they're based lived by, they "rob from the rich and give to the poor" so as to get by. In truth, they rob from the poor only to provide to the poorer, that is to say, themselves; a crafty little scheme cooked up at a car-boot sale of all places sees them put their plans into action as an array of items are stolen from a table as another member distracts the retailer, thus illustrating the sort of life they lead so as to get by.

The characters are, as the title suggests, small time but they're wanting to move out into the big time. At the centre appears the question as to whether the men are willing to go down a crime fuelled path if it means loosing their women, those of whom want the opposite and wish to get out and away from everything they despise about where they are: their housing, the people around them and the sorts of lives they lead. On a wholly positive note, Kate and Ruby are refreshingly strong characters; Meadows granting them screen time and going on to some impressive lengths so as to deconstruct what it is they feel and think. One sequence sees Kate verbally highlight how disenchanted she is with being stuck in the two bedroom terrace in which they live and relegated to the kitchen, itself a representation of domesticisation, as her man Malc permits himself to go out and enjoy himself.

Where light comedy through dialogue and somewhat amusing altercations as the lads come to acquire goods and products generally dominate, that sense of it leading or building to something thoroughly worth demonising in armed robbery is prominent. As mentioned, Meadows doesn't quite nail the shifting nor the towing and froing in tone that he would later come to execute rather well, particularly in the aforementioned This is England as well as 2004's revenge thriller Dead Man's Shoes, which you distinctly felt shift right nearer the end. Regardless, you admire the ambition in the effort even if it is a little underwhelming but there are ideas and specific approaches to specific material that's worth checking out and placing in context thus culminating in a just-about worthwhile film watching experience.