24 heures sur 24

A gritty black & white film from the 25 year old director, Shane Meadows. Darcy, (played by Bob Hoskins in one of his better roles since MONA LISA & THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY), decides to take a bunch of restless teenagers off the streets and into the boxing ring. Then we go through the process of the bonding and the struggle as the boys come good. It begins as a realistic social drama and ends that way. I was glad to see that it didn't sell out.

I've been waiting a while for this to reach our screens, and though anticipation undoubtedly adds flavour, I was favourably impressed. Meadows has been billed as Britain's new white hope and 'Twentyfourseven' promises good things for the future. It may not have the (attempted) dramatic scope of a film like 'the Boxer', which in plot terms it resembles, but Meadows covers the ground efficiently and without histrionics in a free-flowing cinematic style that simultaneously displays a tensile strength. Meadows' eye is good (the crane shot outside the club at a crucial point towards the end shows that he can do formal, too) but his ear is even better. The exchanges and insults between the two gangs and among themselves, even when not fully comprehended by my kiwi ear, make similar lines from 'Good Will Hunting' and other popular films sound contrived. The freshness of 'Twentyfourseven' may be supported by control and critical judgement, but it is, all the same, real.

TwentyFourSeven is a pleasing film from director Shane Meadows who also acted and co-wrote the screenplay. Rather sensibly for a first-time endeavour, he's opted for a low-key work rather than the flashy fragmented works of other young debutantes (Guy Ritchie please take note).

The story is alarmingly simple and is thus: Alan Darcy (Bob Hoskins, excellent) helps out wayward youths in a harsh Northern town by running a boxing club. And that, basically, is it. The film perhaps plays on too narrow a canvass and it's "life is harsh" rhetoric can be mildly overstated. Witness the habitual drug user who turns up to a bout with the largest spliff in history. This guy does drugs, and in case you don't get the point, here's a telescopic joint that would bankrupt Columbia. Bruce Jones' wife-beater can also be a little one-dimensional, saved only by the actors' charm. Yet the fact that the screenplay is so modest in it's ambitions helps it immensely. A lesser talent would have thrown everything at the screen for his first full-length work, yet Meadows tells his tale and tells it well.

Dialogue that could veer towards slight pretention is saved by the wonderful Hoskins, while the real triumph is the black and white filming. This isn't the Schindler's List type of black and white; a dull grey that looks like a normal film with the colour control on your TV turned down. This is a dark, grimy black and white that takes away any contemporary restraints. Particularly notable are the scenes set against the woods and train car, and the pace they evoke. This is a film that doesn't drag but takes it's time with precision. It will entertain you and doesn't need to rush it. Impressive.

This wonderful film ironises the feel-good 'Rocky' tradition to critique an ideology - Thatcherism - that poisoned a nation still searching for the antidote. Like all Meadows films, this is great fun, with authentic-seeming performances matched by remarkable style which mixes stylised naturalism and sketch-like sequences. But looming over the larks is a depressing framing story - we know the plot ends up here. The unbearable tension is wondering how. The answer is heartbreaking, showing how the thatcher years brought Britain to the brink of fascism, where an underclass are either bullied or ignored to a point where the only means of expression is self-destructive violence. The 'poetic' voiceover is a mistake, especially for a director of Meadow's visual intelligence, but he'll get there. A great feature debut.

This film was one I had heard of, thought I'd like to see, but simply missed. When it came on pay-tv I made a point of taping it and I'm glad I did. In an extremely simple but effective way this film transports the viewer to a seedy english working class neighbourhood with its local 'colour' and crushing gloom, hopelessness and misery. A fair short film, in some respects I felt the tale unfinished - little by way of background, the heart of the film was the training and first competition which doesn't run too long, then - almost before you know it - its all over. Still, definitely worth a watch for some fine acting, interesting (though not overly original) plot, and fine but simple film-making. (ps although I can understand the use of b/w I'm not really convinced it was all that necessary or effective). My vote 7/10