Young Soul Rebels

firstly this film has some mistakes in it,i was a soul girl back int he day,punks and soul boys weren't pally,but not enemies either,the didn't go to the same clubs,the fashion is correct but the music is out of time ,some of the music came out maybe up to 2 years later,that apart it does pick up the atmosphere of the day and the vibe and is at least acknowledging the soul scene,and the cult of soul boys and girls ,a major thing,but very unknown which is odd,i guess the write must have a bit of info of the movement,still as a fun film its OK and does bring a few

memories i think unless you were part of the scene you would find this

a bit dull,it is hollow ,but the clothes and dancing are all spot on,although gay guys did have there own disco clubs,again fairly underground as back then it wasn't as tolerated as it is,rightly so,now as so many other films have been made about punks and skinheads it god to see a movie reflecting a little known but extremely popular movement

Johnny Mills , as one of the skinhead kissing gay punks in the night club , is the highlight of this movie. He also appeared with Tilda Swinton in Derek Jarman's The Garden 1990.

I am amazed at the lack of knowledge displayed by the previous reviewer. I first saw this film in the 90s and watched it again last night. I was part of this general scene in southern England at that time and I have to say that the music, dancing and fashions are completely accurate. This nonsense about Afros and flares, that belonged in the early 70s, by 77 all that had changed. And yes, punks and soul boys were mixing in the clubs, fashions crossed over even earlier, the plastic "jelly" sandals and winkle picker shoes, all adopted from the punks in late 76/77.If anybody had walked in with flares there would have been howls of laughter.

I saw this film shortly after it's release, and felt quite cheated. It's title and advertising gave me the impression that it would be about the black DJ sound systems and soul scene which was at it's height in England during the late '70s and early '80s. But this only took up a fraction of film time. Instead, I had to sit through a convoluted sub-plot featuring a murder mystery which appeared all of a sudden during the movie, a very gratuitous gay sex scene, and generally bad acting and direction. There were a few moments where the protagonists had brushes with the law, and I thought at last this film was going somewhere and would depict the racism of the justice system accurately. But this was not the case, and these scenes appeared to have been either badly written, or edited. And when one character deceides to carry out his own murder investigation, I found it laughable. I understand that no film can be 100% accurate when depicting an era or events around it, and that it should be entertaining to the viewer. But at least a good attempt should be made to get the basics right. For example, hardly any of the black male actors sported an afro hairstyle or wore flares, which would have been as common as a rainy day in London during 1977. Blacks mixing with Punks? I'm no sure about that. They would have considered a lot of Punks to be similar to the skinheads which carried out a lot of racist attacks at that time. Also another sex scene featuring Sophie Okenedo and Valentine Nonyela, was not handled well at all, and was certainly not as explicit as the previous gay sex scenes which says a lot about it's director. By trying to show that homosexuality in the black british community is opposed more than in the white, I feel is absolute nonsense. Homophobia has no colour preference, and being black, it's director Isaac Julien should know better really.

I'm afraid that this is a bit all over the place. In attempting to deal with multiple issues simultaneously it ends up doing justice to none of them well. A man is killed while cruising for gay sex in a local park and the subsequent investigation tries to deal with racism, sexism and homophobia amongst both the local community and the police. At times it is a love story - platonic and sexual between friends and lovers but the lines are blurred and the conflict seems largely manufactured. The performances are clunky and the script likewise. Sorry, but too much of a hutch-potch for me to make much sense of.