City Rats

This little-seen, poorly regarded, conspicuously grungy British Indie melodrama features top Lahnden sleazers, the priapic, potty-mouthed Diamond Slags of 'The Business', and this time out, Danny Dyer & Tamer Hassan credibly play against type, delivering career best performances in, Steve Kelly's witheringly bleak, downward-spiraling, multi character, inner-city existential nightmare, 'City Rats' (2009). A suitably sordid, superbly acted ensemble piece that greatly deserves far more of a nod than it currently receives. So, if you should ever care to take a butchers at some of the more debased creatures lurking within London's seamy underbelly, 'City Rats' provides a rather stark, if not exactly edifying overview of their tawdry travails!

Outside of its relative obscurity, 'City Rats' adds a singular 'oddness' to the all-too familiar milieu of London's oft-romanticized criminal underclasses that, for me, makes, Steve Kelly's downbeat drama a wholly unique experience! And it would be entirely remiss of me if I didn't mention the gutsy performance given by the fabulous, Susan Lynch as the disabled prostitute, 'Gina'. As someone who has spent much of his adult life in a dark place, some of the themes explored in 'City Rats' rang uncomfortably true, and it's a shame that the swarthily handsome Hassan's robust performance as a morose dipso has been ignored, and if no one else, Bukowski woulda dug on this one!

I was unfortunate enough to watch this film thinking perhaps it was another English gangster flick in the spirit of 'The Business' having seen Danny Dyer on the cover. However, I was instead greeted by a distasteful and depressing flick lacking significant character development. Not only this but there on numerous scenes of young gay men covorting with each other with no real explanation as to why. Other themes include suicide and drug addiction but are all terribly portrayed.

If you want to see this sort of film done properly watch requiem for a dream or the korean film 'peppermint candy' starring Kyung Gu-Sol, avoid this film at all costs people, save yourself the time and painful headache, whoever made this movie needs a good councilor.

I was intrigued by the opening to this film and the rooftop shots immediately set off a bout of involuntary, recoil muscle twitching (don't they put guard rails on the roofs of those buildings?). The sombre mood and beautifully lit scenes were drawing me in.

I had mixed feelings about the presence of Danny Dyer, who was excellent in Straightheads, but has made some terrible film choices at times. A comment from one of the most critical reviewers, saying, "Such a waste to see Danny Dyer go from the likes of The Business & Football Factory to films like this", is one of the funniest things I have ever read.

The appearance of the utterly wonderful Susan Lynch immediately bestowed all the credibility a film ever needs, and I thought she looked absolutely stunning here, albeit in a wonderfully seedy yet secretly vulnerable way.

It was the frustrated artist who I had problems with and felt the idea of his fleeting gay relationship unconvincing. The gay brothers (one of them autistic) was also a highly contrived scenario, seemingly included purely to satisfy the director's desire to film some gay club action. The thumping club music also obscured some of the dialogue that was necessary to understand exactly what was supposed to be taking place.

Mumbled or poorly recorded dialogue also left me not knowing how the nurse with Danny Dyer could possible have had a son by a man who she had never kissed and was in a coma (at least that's how it came across to me). It wasn't until the very end, when I was wondering how the characters came together, that I deduced that Danny Dyer was somehow related to the two brothers.

In conclusion, there was a lot wrong with this film but there was some good acting in spite of the dodgy plot and the film itself did actually look good. I refuse to give any film with Susan Lynch in it less that seven stars.

Danny Dyer. On the cover. Holding a gun. Must be another cockney gangster film methinks, but I couldn't be more wrong. What we have here is a dull and depressing drama in which several scuzzy Londoners cross paths during their everyday lives. No hard geezers carrying sawn-offs. No bent rozzers taking a bung. No suited and booted chancers ducking and diving. Just a whole lot of suicide, sex, murder and drugs, with a masturbating artist, a crippled hooker, a drunken ex-con, a mother looking for her dead son, a self destructive man and woman, and a gay autistic deaf bloke looking to get laid with a little help from his brother. While all of this sounds like the recipe for a sleazy slice of fun, the drama is played out in a very measured (ie., boring) manner, and frequently enters pretentious art-house territory, meaning that most Dyer fans will think it's a load of old pony. I did.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

London is a city full of people, moving about in droves, with little time for each other, facing straight ahead and barely noticing each other exists. From the top looking down below, people might well appear like 'rats', scurrying about to whatever garbage bin has attracted their attention. No one appears to have the time to look in the more solitary corners and see the sorry state of affairs going on there. In short, it's a terrible place to be lonely and stared down at. Yet the main characters presented in City Rats, each one linked to each other in some way which we find out about as the story goes on, prompt the sort of contempt which makes us inflict this grim fate on them but as events roll on, we are forced to see them in a different light and see less judgemental reasoning for how things turned out like they did for them. Starting with the ex drug dealer trying to buckle down to an honest living who is approached by the mother of a guy he used to know to help track him down, we move on to a wife beater separated from his family who whiles away his time dropping water melons from tall buildings and sharing phone sex with a crippled prostitute who finds herself the interest of a poet who lives on the floor below her. Meanwhile, a man takes his deaf, autistic brother on a tour around seedy Soho to help him lose his virginity and come to terms with his homosexuality.

Maybe we don't have the best actors to play them, but this is still a very impressive character study, that has a clever use of atmosphere, mood and soundtrack to engross us in what's going on. The whole 'water melons dropping from a building' thing is a bit weird and not explained properly but Tamer Hassan's character develops the most, with his relationship with a similarly suicidal young woman which has a devastating, abrupt conclusion. A small film with some flaws, but enough going on beneath the surface to make it shine. ****