Triads, Yardies & Onion Bhajees!

The grainy black and white I totally get. The lack of engaging plot is not the worst I've ever known.

But what kills this film from within the first couple of minutes is the atrocious acting. I'd go so far as to say they were just reading an autocue! I've seen better acting from Joey in Friends and in my high school drama class.

I am a fan of cheesy, bad movies but this is so poorly acted, it makes the whole film completely unwatchable.

Only once before in over 30 years have I not watched a film to the very end, including every bad TV movie you can think of... But this is now the second.

Save your money - Go watch a 1970s adult film where the mustachioed plumber comes to fix the fridge. It's more convincing!!

I find it difficult to objectively write a full review of this title "Triads, Yardies, Onion Bhagees" as I only could manage 30 minutes. The concept of a multi-culturally controlled London criminal underworld and their struggles for dominance and diplomacy is a good one. Yet, it has been used before. Anyone thinking the Grand Theft Auto games if you replace London with "generic American city"?

As a fan of innovative screenplay, hand-held cameras and gritty settings I should be sympathetic towards this film. It reminded me of a poor attempt between the Shield and Jean Luc Goddard's Breathless. Having now related those two brilliant titles to this makes me feel dirty... If you watch the film, you'll see what I mean with the whole film being done through hand-held camera with not one single establishing shot. This I can survive with for half an hour - but please... there has to be sometime to rest! The camera often tried to show off with some freezes and zooming in. Some showy angles and trying basically to be exciting. Often it seemed to much a student project but once in a while there was a good shot. Problem was with this, when one was found, the trick was abused and used over and over again. In some ways, it was like watching an advert with fast changes from angles and moments within a scene, dialogue being narrated much like one long incessant movie commercial for a film rather than a film itself. This concept never seemed to stop and became more confusing than flashy. These jump cuts being used like French New Wave on crack!

The soundtrack had some good samples. However, the problem lies there. They should have remained samples. Through the first 30 minutes, ten second samples were looped over and over in certain scenes. Changing to another sample for the next scene. In fact, the soundtrack NEVER stops. One scene is a bhangra sample on loop, next it's some gangsta rap. It's also louder than the speech. My thoughts for this were to fill the lack of dialogue and to cover it's poor content for when someone did say something.

The acting was waaaaay over the top. Not one actor held my attention, sympathy or drew any kind of interest. Many of the actors seemed to have little experience of acting to the point of being dragged off the street. The worst moment had to be the introduction to the Chinese boss. This was the only point where a soundtrack stopped... only replaced with an ambient tone... in an attempt to appear mystic and frightening, his accent was Oxbridge, but his overacting and whispering with little gestures were pretty cringe worthy. His bodyguards were the most disappointing - especially their dresscode which was probably attempting to be Matrix-esquire.

The realism is pretty poor without a doubt. Whether this was intentional, I am uncertain. Research into the subject is laughable. One thing that particularly bugged me was a character in almost every scene would have to have a gun as a prop at one point. Whether to caress, pull out and put on the table and shove in someone's face. Now, I'm not a gangster but surely some subtly is required. Maybe it's just to remind the audience we're looking at gangsters. Having said that, I did notice a blatant yet respectable homage to Scarface where a line of coke is done off the DVD box...

CGI and effects are non-existent. Clearly, this is a low budget film. So I wouldn't expect there to be. But one attempt at a gunshot when the bullet missed and hit the wall was embarrassing! The was a little fireball on the wall when the bullet hit which looked like a cartoon explosion from an old arcade game. On top of that, it was in colour. The rest of the film is in black and white.

Regarding the grainy black and white setting. A lot of people have been quite critical of this. Personally, like the concept of the film and some of it's ideas; it isn't bad. They're just done too many times, too blatantly and abused. Of course, this isn't the case with the black and white, since they've stuck to it. As a fan of New Wave, I would say black and white with a touch of grain deserves a nod every now and then; it's a great effect for a film. But unfortunately not to everyone's taste.

This film I'd say 2 stars. Maybe some people out there like watching it - personally I'd say it's good if you're 14, an aspiring "gangsta" and playing Grand Theft Auto when you should be at school, but for anyone else, give it a miss.

We bought this film thinking and believing it was going to be a great British gangster film- comparing itself to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, we have yet to discover the comparison! The story/plot seemed like a winning formula- we were very wrong. The acting other than Dave Courtney was atrocious, and the most laughable one being that of the main character/hardman Singh. We couldn't take it seriously we found it all so bizarre and not at all close to that of real life gangsters and gangs, I can't go any deeper into that without giving some of the plot away. We presumed it was filmed in black and white as it looked even worse in colour. Had this film been more realistic and better actors used-not so wooden and reading from a script it could have been enjoyable.We had to laugh at the end that we had sat and watched it all. Do not be sucked in to the false advertising on the cover a complete waste of time.

At long last I get to review one of my favourite films of recent years. I got to see this while a student in Leicester in an art-house cinema. Triads, Yardies... blows away every stereotype concerning the British Asian community. The film belongs to newcomer Manish Patel (Singh) who literally steals the show as well as the cash and the girl (in the story!). Very few actors achieve cult status in their debut films but it appears that Patel has done this by the bucket load. Getting Dave Courtney (Mad Dave) to portray the head of the English mob was an inspired move. Remember, Guy Ritchie had earmarked this actor for the roles Vinnie Jones played in Lock, Stock... and Snatch. The fact this film is based on a very real four way gang war between the Indians, Chinese, Jamaicans and the English mobs for control of London's cocaine trade is a secondary story line. The main story arc is about a hit-man's (Patel) love for a woman and the heist of ten million dollars from Heathrow Airport. It is a shame this film was only screened at art-house cinemas as it would have made some serious cash at the multiplexes.

I have absolutely no doubt that this is the single worst film I've ever seen in my entire life.

Where to being on whats wrong with it, firstly don't believe the DVD case as this film isn't actually in colour, its actually in black and white. This doesn't actually add anything to the film and has no reason to be in B&W as the films not set in the past or anything.

The story is basically about loads of gangsters trying to do mundane gangster things. The story's very hard to follow and because of the absolutely abysmal acting you can't take anything happening seriously.

The movie is horrifically boring, badly shot and has one of the worst, most nonsensical endings in film history.

And finally I have to just say that on the front of the DVD case where the film gets good reviews and one reviewer even compares the film to lock stock, you should notice that this review is from the BBC... the people that made the film.