London To Brighton

I know this film came out a while ago but I've only just got around to seeing it. It was highly praised at the time but I knew exactly what it would be like and having just watched it, absolutely nothing surprised me or differed from my imagined view.

I was led to believe that Paul Andrew Williams was a mere 24 when this film came out (2006) but according to the IMDb, he is actually 34. I know it's hard to get films made in this country but for how long should we hold someone's hand? 33 last year, that would be the same age Coppola was when he directed the Godfather. You're a big boy now Paul so you have to play by the big boy rules.

This film is riddled with plagiaristic clichés. For example, the sequence where bodies are stuffed into the boot of the car and are driven out to a field, the "Goodfellas" style red tail-lights illuminating the graves that the victims must dig themselves. Yawn, yawn, yawn... Blood Simple did it better, and so did Shallow Grave for that matter.

The fact that London To Brighton is yet another gangster film crossed with the other British staple, the 'estate-dwelling marginalized fuck-up' genre, makes for really uninspired viewing. Don't get me wrong, the construction of the film is such that even though the dialogue mostly consists of the, "Woziz name anyway?' 'Oi, mate, you got a light?' 'Fuck off ya cunt' type dialogue, it still ticks along at a nimble pace, keeping you not so much wanting to know what's going to happen (that's already pretty obvious) more not wanting to know what's on the other channel. This is after all, no more than a television film. It's like an episode of Cracker but without Jimmy McGovern's excellent writing. (The Cracker special "Cracker 'Nine Eleven' excluded - what a fucking travesty)

So many moments ring untrue. In particular, the scenes at the Brighton safehouse and in particular, the safehouse occupants. They all look like students; nice well-to-do students like you or I would know, yet they live with an ex-prostitute, who still has connections with London thugs and gangsters but they don't seem to care much. I guess that's because they're too stoned to notice. One of them, a nice clean looking young man, is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to knowing all the choice spots for our prostitute heroine to go work some Johns for a bit of scratch. Nah, I don't buy it.

Then there's the Mr. Big character who likes to sleep with little girls. He's so rich and powerful, that as we track through his palatial and tasteless home, we listen to none other than the first movement of Beethoven's The Moonlight Sonanta. Yep, that's because he's rich (so would obviously be a classical fan) and fucked up (so would obviously listen to sad classical music). This music was used equally successfully in the bullet-time assassination sequence in Guy Ritchie's Revolver.

The little girl was not right for her role. She was clearly from a higher social class than her character, not unlike the lead roles in Tom Harper's short film, 'Cubs'. She bore a striking resemblance to the 12 year old character Mathilda played by Nathalie Portman in Luc Besson's Leon. I'm sure this must have been an influence on the casting, conscious or unconscious as Paul Andrew Williams strikes me as the sort who would still think Leon a good film.

Being British, and street, and gangster, it has of course it's fair smattering of the old D&B dotted throughout - hey, this is Britain, how can we not have some Drum & Bass in our film, Britain invented D&B! Even though er... most people stopped listening to that shit 10 years ago and I can't think of a single film where it hasn't helped but pull it down to a level of ridicule?

I'll stop here. I suppose the fact that I viewed it directly after watching Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro didn't help much but I doubt it would have made a difference. British films need to stand up on their own two feet, they shouldn't be given exemption. There are many British films of the past that serve to remind us that we once knew what we were doing and it's time to claim back that heritage. Until we do so, we will continue to be mocked by our superior international peers.

To finalize, let us see what Adrian Hennigan of the BBC Film Network had to say:

"If you can imagine Mike Leigh shooting a thriller set in the seedy underworld of London, you're part-way towards conjuring up Paul Andrew Williams' directorial debut."

Like for instance... ooh I don't know, Mike Leigh's thriller set in the seedy underworld of London, called "Naked"?