Where do you start with a film like this?
I'll try to be nice. Theres a few good ideas flying around here. The use of archive material is quite effective. Some of the cinematography is nice. Erm, the music's ok.
As a whole though, its a failure.
I wasn't expecting a lot - I rented this film purely because I live in the area portrayed. And thank god I do, as for the large part it was only being able to go 'oh look, thats suchandsuch street' that kept me viewing. And even then I almost turned it off before the end.
So whats so wrong here? First and foremost, the script. Its appalling. Character, plot, atmosphere, everything is sacrificed to a woefully misguided attempt to be cool. Every single character speaks in an immensely irritating 'street' style that utterly fails to ring true. The setting is a failed attempt to create a disperate group of 'crazy' characters around a 'cool' location. With good writing and charismatic acting this kind of thing can work (eg 'trainspotting'). For an example of how this could have been done in Brixton, check out 'Milk, Sulphate and Alby Stavation', a novel by Martin Millar. Set in Brixton, and more 'far out' than anything here, yet it still rings far truer.
The plot is poorly conceived, and eventually disintegrates into characters moving seemingly at random from one location to another. Eventually some plastic cockney gangsters turn up as the filmmakers throw some Guy Ritchie into the mix in the hope that it will impress someone.
Although it's not neccessarily a bad thing for a film to fail to resemble real life, the postcode title and archive news material would suggest that the filmmakers are attempting to reflect the real brixton here. Once again, they fail. The real Brixton does have its fair share of (mostly self-proclaimed) funky scenesters, but they're hard to spot among the desperate drug addicts, pushy dealers, aggresive petty criminals and put-upon locals trying to keep their head down and get through the day unscathed. To make a film about this region which either ignores or glamourises the overwhelming social problems present is ridiculous and irresponsible. If the film is intended as fantasy, then why tie it to a real place and a real history?
In the end though, I would happily overlooked all this if the film had entertained. Although the start is fairly promising, boredom soon sets in, followed by disbelief.
How some other reviewers found this film enjoyable is hard to understand, although the fact that most of them mention drugs in their reviews perhaps goes some way towards explaining. If you're a teenage male who thinks drugs are really really cool then you might get something out of this mess, but even then I'd imagine you'll be waiting for it to end by about halfway in.
To sum up - this film tries far too hard, and fails at virtually everything it tries.
