Bullet Boy

I saw this film last night at the Tricycle theatre and I have to say it showed the real look at 'road' life as we know it for our young black brothers. Being Black British myself I really felt the film through the eyes of the mother, Ricky and Curtis, it was a brilliant watch. You may call it typical of movies, but this was a British film with edge and class at getting the message right! I was brought to tears on the way home remembering how many of our brothers are going through and have been through (RIP) this similar scenario, so I know why I appreciate being a mentor to uplift my community

Back in 1980, Franco Rosso's Babylon, starring Aswad's Brinsley Forde, told the story of young black Britain under siege. Filmed around Deptford, Lewisham and Brixton in south London and financed by the National Film Council, it drew a fundamentally honest, unsentimental portrait, employing a rich, unsubtitled patois. Understandably, much of the film also dealt with racism - white on black - and its tragic repercussions.

Twenty-five years on, the most significant (and depressing) thing about Saul Dibb's study of black Londoners is its frank recognition that the hate and violence has since turned inward - manifested in gun crime.

In Bullet Boy, 20-year-old Ricky (Walters, aka So Solid Crew's Asher D) is paroled from youth custody and attempts to rekindle a relationship with his girlfriend Shea (Samuels). Hooking up with his hot-headed friend - the ironically named Wisdom (Black) - he almost immediately runs into trouble with rival Godfrey (Lawson) in a road rage incident. As the tit-for-tat feud escalates, Ricky's impressionable 12-year-old brother Curtis (Fraser) discovers a gun which Wisdom has given Ricky for his protection - and the murderous cycle of violence continues.

This is a film of firsts. Arriving some 15 years after a brace of similarly-themed American films, such as John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood, this is the first film to spotlight gun violence in Britain's black community, and makes an interesting comparison. It's documentary maker Dibb's first feature too, having previously made 'Electric Avenue' and 'The Tottenham Ayatollah' for Channel 4 television. And it's Asher's (okay, Walters') movie debut.

It's a cute - and astute - stroke of casting: he'd read the script while in prison for gun possession. And the cast is one of the things Bullet Boy has got right, featuring gutsy and unsentimental performances, particularly from the all too convincing lead, but also from stand-up comedian Curtis Walker as a former bad-boy-turned-pastor and Perkins as a pragmatic matriarch.

The use of non-professional actors also imbues proceedings with documentary-style naturalism, matched by the film's east London locations, photographed by Marcel Zyskind in pitiless natural light, and employed very effectively during a recurring motif of a dead dog floating on a river like the ghost at the feast.

Though Dibb cannot hope to encompass the whole subject matter in a 90-minute film, his focus on how gun culture affects the entire family unit is an intelligent approach, making the wider issue accessible - and subsequently harder hitting.

If certain sequences appear heavy-handed - 12-year-old Curtis playing shoot-em-up videogames as a prescient prelude to tragedy; the Godfather-style juxtaposition between a church sermon and a murder - well, perhaps that's the way it ought to be.

This film was painful to sit through. Went to the screening at the London film festival and couldn't believe the stereo typical representations with dialogue so bad (it made me cringe) I couldn't understand how the film council can spend tax payers money on something so pointless.

I went with two black friends of mine to see the film. For a film that's supposed to be of serious nature they laughed all the way through it as if it was a comedy. I assumed I wasn't getting the jokes but later found out they were laughing at it rather than with it.

It was obvious that the executives at film council have none or very little knowledge about the black community in London. I've worked with many black children/ youth and I couldn't recognise many of the characters that appeared on the film.

I wasn't surprised to find out that the producers of this very awful film are actually executives at the film council. NO WONDER. This isn't a film I recommend even when it's on TV.

I wasn't expecting too much of this film before I saw it, but I have to say I was wrong to think it would be dull. Although American audiences -- and, in fact, non-London-dwelling audiences -- probably won't appreciate it for its wonderful depiction of east London, I find myself for once thankful that I live in Hackney. Some scenes around the Hackney Marshes and Lea Valley are astonishingly lush, to the extent that I had my doubts they were actually filmed there, because they present such a contrast to the grubby streets I'm used to, and which are portrayed in other parts of the film.

One of the other things that struck me was the accuracy of the dialogue -- I know this sounds a bit silly, but it's easy to get wrong, and in Bullet Boy there wasn't a word out of place. Lines like "that dog's like my brethren" are faintly amusing, but people do actually speak like that, and Bullet Boy got it exactly right.

I think Bullet Boy is a beautiful film, and have in fact only one gripe besides perhaps its inaccessibility for people who aren't English: the editing-over of a sign at a train station from the station name to 'Platform 2'. I'm an appalling pedant.

Bullet Boy is the sort of film that deserves to be seen by far more people than are, unfortunately, ever likely to see it. It's utterly gripping the whole way through - almost every scene is filled an unbearably tense air of looming tragedy, as events spiral out of control. The cast (a mixture of professionals and non-actors) all give superb, deeply honest performances, most notably Ashley Walters and Claire Perkins.

Where most British films that strive for an air of realism fail by simply trying too hard, laying on the "grittiness" far too thick, Bullet Boy always seems completely natural, unforced and unfailingly true-to-life. While it's undeniably a fairly bleak and upsetting tale, the film is never boring, never depressing, never anything less than wholly involving. Crafting something genuinely special with a very limited budget, this is a great feature debut from documentary maker Dibb. You shouldn't see Bullet Boy because it's an "issue" film (although the issue it addresses is extremely important); you should see it because it's a brilliant film.