Plan B's debut film ILL MANORS #brokenbritain

I saw this yesterday. Patchy, some impressive stuff and some awful stuff; it basically gets good when it abruptly turns into a ludicrous episode of EastEnders midway through. It's not really ~a commentary on Broken Britain~ at all, it's a clichéd gangster movie x soap opera. First half is drug dealers of varying seniority shouting tediously and inarticulately at each other (yes yes I know they're not meant to be articulate but give us some dialogue with humour to chew on at least), second half is all about the a BABY subplot. Riz Ahmed is very good, a lot of the others aren't.

I'm no expert but bits of the plot did not seem realistic in the slightest.

Plan B has no idea how to draw female characters, the most important one is a completely different person in the second half to the first, although bless him for TRYING - it even passes the Bechdel test!

He should possibly have made sure that scenes that were meant to be at night weren't shot in obvious daylight at times.

I kind of began to dread the musical interlude flashback exposition scenes :/

Running 9 billion narratives in parallel and intertwining them and tying them all up together at the end was pretty well done, I thought.

it's probably worth seeing.

Sounds fucking appalling.

I think lex has it right. It's a very unusual film which takes a lot of risks and gets a few things seriously wrong but it has its own voice. The only way I think it really deals with #brokenbritain is the dialogue between two ideas - you're a product of your environment vs you are morally responsible for your choices. It keeps toggling back and forth and although commentators have tended to emphasise the angle that fits their own worldview what I admire about it (and the song) is that it makes the case for both/and rather than either/or (as did Boyz N the Hood). It's not a great movie but it's a brave, occasionally inspired one, and I wasn't bored for a second.

Annoying to see smart critics like Peter Bradshaw call it a movie "about the riots" when it began shooting in 2010 and the riot footage, like the title song, were added much later. It shouldn't be seen as a political movie so much as a moral one.

i've spent time waiting for trains staring at the poster for this (PLAN B PRESENTS: A BEN DREW FILM!) trying to come up with any possible ludicrous set of circumstances where i would end up seeing it. came up with nada obv.

It's not really ~a commentary on Broken Britain~ at all, it's a clichéd gangster movie x soap opera.

wot a shocker. there's at least five of these shitty films every year.

what was that girlgangs one, SKET? that looked like it might be vaguely fun

smart critics aren't like Peter Bradshaw.

also not one character makes reference to anything beyond their own world, as self-contained as an EE episode, least of all to government.

the tart-with-a-heart character is one huge cliché to begin with but SPOILER how does the miserable downtrodden crack whore who doesn't muster up a squeak of protest as she's degraded in the first half suddenly become this go-getting feisty saviour of trafficking victims, ready to burst into gangster-run brothels and bash people on the head with bricks as a first resort?

xp i kind of wanted to see SKET but the moment passed

So this is closer to schlocky stuff like Kidulthood then I dunno Topboy or anything that reckons its going for miniature Wire status then?

Kudos for not lazily putting Asher D in it I suppose.

you're a product of your environment vs you are morally responsible for your choices

got a feeling there may be some other work on this contentious subject that doesn't involve me watching a Plan B movie

I haven't seen Topboy or the Wire, friend I was with said the first half was a shitty version of both though.

xp Well that's because it's morally schematic. She turns from someone trapped and broken into someone who makes a choice to do something right. Similar to what happens with Ed. It makes sense in the film's moral universe but, like you say, not at the level of character. The problem is that, having overplayed the degradation in the first half, he leaves no realistic route to redemption. The characters have to go from 0-60. But I like that he at least tries to put across his message on the level of character and action rather than falling back on the kind of didactic dialogue that lets down Boyz N the Hood.

You don't have to see it Noodle Vague. Nobody's saying he's made a major breakthrough in the study of human nature.

talking of going 0-60, springing straight out of a smack coma into altruistic action was not the film's most plausible moment

My main defence of it is not that it's a great movie but that it's neither politically dogmatic nor just anuvva hacky, gangland Britflick. It's odder and more distinctive than that, for better or worse.

looking forward to seeing this.

is the jessie j film out yet?

also that chase and status show at the white cube sounds brilliant

You should head on over to the Guardian comment threads. Full of people who find it hilarious that a musician should be allowed to direct a movie that they haven't actually seen. Know your place, musicians.

movies are shit enough already without plan b getting involved.

we get it, everything about this modern world is shit, fuck off to an old people's home already

They're shit too these days

#brokenbritain

we get it, everything about this modern world is shit, fuck off to an old people's home already

prob need more positivity and benevolence, like yourself.

wot a shocker. there's at least five of these shitty films every year.

There are WAY more of these than that! Indie distribution film markets are littered with HUNDREDS of these a year, many competently-shot, but without the Noel Clarke and/or Riz Ahmed and/or a rapper you may have heard of 'name' to get above the bottom shelf of the video store.

Adam Deacon, aka the 2012 BAFTA Rising Star Award as voted by the public, is basically a one-man industry for these things.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Shankposter1.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e5/Sugarhouse.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/46/Shooters.JPGhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/Bonded_by_Blood.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e5/AnuvaHood.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/Paybackseasonposter.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Victim_promotional_film_poster.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/Comedown.jpg

Adam Deacon vs Professor Green vs Plan B

p sure the winner in that three-way is DAVE LEGEND.

i was having a long think about what's depressing about the way working class british kids have bought into and reproduced an increasingly limited narrative of their own lives but it belongs in another thread i guess

see themselves reflected back in the 21st century version of cowboy B-movies meeting Reefer Madness meeting a self-sentimental streak barely altered since Gracie Fields

actually this is a good a place as any to meaunder about this. we become what we dream of becoming but the dreams get narrower and more divorced from the "reality" of experience?

it's worth seeking out interview footage of new 18 yr old manchester united signing nick powell, who despite coming from crewe seems to speak a version of what wikipedia describes as 'multicultural london english'

i am always amazed at the number of films that get made and get no distribution and make like £40k from festivals

do bbc3 screen these moveis? or do ppl in russia or thailand have a thing for them

kids lap this stuff up! extra violent Eastenders seems to cover a lot of it, with some musical numbers thrown in. i guess there is a straight lineage back to Cliff Richard flicks and then seriously back to Gracie Fields but with modern manners and codes of conduct. because i think like a section of Eastenders' audience thinks its watching the truth about itself played back at it, the audience for these movies feels like they're watching a (maybe heightened) version of their own reality

(of course by the same token you could argue that Sexy Vampire fans and Superhero Movie fans and all the other nerd cultures also think they're watching a (maybe heightened) version of their own reality. and to some extent all those audiences are right in that this is the reality they construct?)

yeah but to take one at random, 'victim' has 15 user ratings on imdb, compared to 72 user ratings for an early short by jean eustache

(of course by the same token you could argue that Sexy Vampire fans and Superhero Movie fans and all the other nerd cultures also think they're watching a (maybe heightened) version of their own reality. and to some extent all those audiences are right in that this is the reality they construct?)

and middle-class dramas, and people watching downton abbey buying into some kind of ~englishness~...

there are no details even for festival showings so those 15 could all be by ppl involved the production

which seems likely given that it is rated 8.6/10 which is about what you'd expect imdb users to give a remake of the shawshank redemption set during the holocaust and directed by baz luhrmann

different audiences? there's a bit of me sympathetic to the urge to have art you don't want to talk about or god help us rate

nobody talks about it or rates it because nobody watches it

lex is right that a slice of the Downton audience wants to think it's watching historical truth.

i watched a bit of the old school Upstairs, Downstairs at my mom's last week and was surprised how sharp and witty it was on class politics.

'payback season' obviously got some distro cuz it has 2.6/10 from 117 users

too real for those imdb middlebrows

Didn't realise Adam Deacon recorded his own tunes as well. He's everywhere.

No. Title Appearance(s) Length
1. "Cum of My Line" (featuring Snakeyman) Kidulthood soundtrack
2. "Bones Diss" Dubplate Drama soundtrack
3. "On It '08" (featuring Plan B, Snakeyman, Blazay & Alphadecious) Adulthood soundtrack
4. "Adamhood" Adulthood soundtrack
5. "Keep Moving" (featuring Bashy and Paloma Faith) 4.3.2.1 soundtrack
6. "Ya Get Me" 4.3.2.1 soundtrack
7. "On This Ting" 4.3.2.1 soundtrack
8. "Typical Actor" 4.3.2.1 soundtrack
9. "My Size Kid" 4.3.2.1 soundtrack
10. "Madness" Shank soundtrack
11. "Hype Hype Ting" (featuring Boy Better Know and JME) Anuvahood soundtrack
12. "Allow Me, Allow Me (Feel the Pain)" Anuvahood soundtrack
13. "Do It" (featuring Professor Green) Anuvahood soundtrack
14. "People's Champion" Anuvahood soundtrack

5. "Keep Moving" (featuring Bashy and Paloma Faith)

lol

1. "Cum of My Line"

hang on, what?

"From the distributor of Kidulthood"
Well, I'm sold

"In the tradition of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"

It's a bit like: "Destined to be shown in some of the cinemas that once screened GOODFELLAS and PULP FICTION"