STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
In Jamaica in the early 1970s, the older brother of Dennis (Aml Ameen) is murdered in a spate of gang warfare. He falls under the wing of King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd), a record producer who runs a side line in drugs. Eventually, he entrusts Dennis to courier a package of cocaine over to England, into the possession of drug kingpin Rico (Stephen Graham), which goes awry, sending him into a dangerous spiral of retribution that threatens to engulf Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), his reacquainted love and the mother of his child, before King Fox's arrival in England, and Dennis's own culminative revenge.
After becoming quite a prominent face on-screen, Idris Alba has decided to retreat behind the camera for a bit with this, his feature length debut after directing two minor TV credits. Adapted from a novel by Victor Headley, he appears to have given it a very personal touch, in what he seems to have taken as a very relatable tale. But the end product is nothing more than a passable, easily forgettable effort, not awful in any sense of the word, but one that fails to be the dynamite tale it possibly could have been.
While Alba has captured the Jamaican patois and street slang impressively accurately, he fails to really get under the skin of the brutal 'yardie' sub-culture, and really bring to life this most negative aspect of Caribbean immigration. Performances wise, Graham as the coke addled drug lord is probably the most high profile cast member, and he is definitely capable of great work, but this really isn't a great example of it, here a hammy villain who's always smoking and swaggering about in colourful shirts and overcoats, although Ameen does command presence in the lead role.
For those fond of underground reggae or even more mainstream stuff from the time the film is set in, it's definitely a bonus that some of the beats are bang tidy. Otherwise, you're left with a serviceable but disappointing tale, that is fused with subplots and sub-characters, but fails to make it all gel into a really satisfying whole. ***
In Jamaica in the early 1970s, the older brother of Dennis (Aml Ameen) is murdered in a spate of gang warfare. He falls under the wing of King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd), a record producer who runs a side line in drugs. Eventually, he entrusts Dennis to courier a package of cocaine over to England, into the possession of drug kingpin Rico (Stephen Graham), which goes awry, sending him into a dangerous spiral of retribution that threatens to engulf Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), his reacquainted love and the mother of his child, before King Fox's arrival in England, and Dennis's own culminative revenge.
After becoming quite a prominent face on-screen, Idris Alba has decided to retreat behind the camera for a bit with this, his feature length debut after directing two minor TV credits. Adapted from a novel by Victor Headley, he appears to have given it a very personal touch, in what he seems to have taken as a very relatable tale. But the end product is nothing more than a passable, easily forgettable effort, not awful in any sense of the word, but one that fails to be the dynamite tale it possibly could have been.
While Alba has captured the Jamaican patois and street slang impressively accurately, he fails to really get under the skin of the brutal 'yardie' sub-culture, and really bring to life this most negative aspect of Caribbean immigration. Performances wise, Graham as the coke addled drug lord is probably the most high profile cast member, and he is definitely capable of great work, but this really isn't a great example of it, here a hammy villain who's always smoking and swaggering about in colourful shirts and overcoats, although Ameen does command presence in the lead role.
For those fond of underground reggae or even more mainstream stuff from the time the film is set in, it's definitely a bonus that some of the beats are bang tidy. Otherwise, you're left with a serviceable but disappointing tale, that is fused with subplots and sub-characters, but fails to make it all gel into a really satisfying whole. ***