Gangues de Londres

This film was alright at best. I try to overlook the budget which made the writing and acting quite poor. The film portrays a quite powerful story but it just didn't really execute it so well into cinematography. It was pretty interesting to see nonetheless and I wouldn't call this film terrible or something.

So we get it you don't like a movie coz it made the headlines....but did you even watch the movie.

Hear me; for those who haven't heard/don't know a bunch of kids in a city of Birmingham in the UK brought some knives and had a huge gang fight and one of the Major Cinema chain knee jerked reaction was to pull the movie nationwide.

Now came the reactions, TV, radio, print media everyone was talking about it and mostly white middle class people who had no understanding what black (London primarily) urban kids have to go through in their lives. Instead of understanding the core of the story and what it was addressing they point out " how loud the movies goers were" or "how London black kids's music this and that".

The reality is knife crime is high in the UK, Gun crime in America NOT JUST black people kill each-other ALL RACES DO! Just coz you don't get what challenges a certain ethic group goes through don't give you the right to be critical and prejudicial or dare I say it ...., which sadly it's undertone has muddled the message the makers of this movie were trying to get across.

So watch THEN JUDGE OR DON'T either way.....

It's sad 2019 and it's like when Boyz in the hood came out last century....SAD!!

This film dumbs the black community of South London. Hardly any characters you can relate to apart from the girl. i grew up in a london council estate around kilburn/ladbroke grove. ive seen gang fights, i was sensible and stayed away, but i get the culture and i love ghetto or gangster films. From Scarface, Goodfellas to boyz n the hood, juice. Even The Football Factory, Green st Hooligans to Adulthood. Topboy was Brilliant and reminded me of real london life. Some of these film, based on real situations although glamorize violence have a good morale and should be entertaining.

Coming back to Blue story. This is where Rapman fails. He obviously tries to explain how a youth can get involved in a postcode gang. BUT Still no depth to the characters on why they choose to join. i.e. the conclusion is that they are all brainwashed

As a audience I coudnt relate and understand the need to join and fight for your postcode. i dont blame the actors, its the script. also Rapman fails in the end. The film should have a emotional good morale to show that it is wrong and stupid to do so and offer or educate solution to it. i.e. police support, the consequence, prison, getting abused in prison, but no...

what i learnt from this film (i.e. knife crime)... 1. The parents are a disgrace to society, the mother in this film has no clue what her son is doing and when police comes, she abuses the police for arresting her son, a murderer. Again making the black community appear dumb. blaming everyone but themself.

2. The youth are just plain thick, one scene they appear smart and sensible, in another they quickly and easily join a gang and are now stupid. again making the south london community appear dumb.

To be fair, Rapman tried. BUT it is a below average film.

The plot for this movie was okay at best. It could have been better. I could get behind some of the characters actions, although they were wrong. However, Rapman showing up every 10 minutes and rapping was awful. It took almost everything good away from the film. He didn't say anything to help the film he just came on screen and said things like "that's peek" or just told us what we had already seen. This just made the film a lot dumber and more like a PSA than a complex character study it could have been if this time was spent on the actual plot.

As someone who has listened to Rapman's music since 2014, I am the target audience for this film and if you are too then you will enjoy it. However it is far from without its flaws. Alot has been made of the fact that this is a majority 1st time actors and that Rapman himself has no formal or directing or screenwriting and while at some points they will impress you, this will also show negatively through some inconsistent writing/acting at times and low budget making for mostly cheesy effects. Both of the stars put in decent performances, Micheal Ward in particular has really impressed me so far this year in this and Top Boy. As someone who watched the original blue story as well, I'm not sure that the story changes are better and while I enjoyed the added parts of the story they did not add a huge amount.

For the target audience like me this is a high 6 (rounded up to a 7)

For the casual viewer this would be a high 5