It's a real shame someone couldn't make something more substantial and important out of this ... I mean they've managed to take an issue about many things - youth, poverty, society, mentality, anger - and turn it into nothing more than the documentation of some black kid being killed.
My first issue is with the narration. Why is it there? He's dead. Is he talking to us from beyond the grave? If so, he's got a pretty muted perspective on things - I mean you would think he'd have more to say concerning his current state than simply who he is and what happened to him. WE ALREADY KNOW. And if we don't we get to know through watching the actual film playing before our very faces. You can't just DO narration, not anymore. It needs to be within some sort of context. If he's so desperate to tell his story that he must travel to this plane of reality and narrate a film then more needs to be said beyond the painfully obvious. Trite things like this sap a film's intrigue and disengage the audience.
My second issue is with the characterisations. An 18 year old kid who goes out of his way to kill a 15 year old, who may or may not be seeing his girlfriend (the 15 year old kid who definitely didn't know she wasn't single), is BROKEN. He is not an evil, brooding antagonist, he's insane in the membrane and that needs to be addressed ... and if he just so happens not to be, then THAT needs to be addressed; the fact that he's grown into that way of thinking. The point that's clearly being missed in all of this is that there's a "Shakilus Townsend" case almost every other week. It happens WAY too often to just be turned into a 'simple-Simon' murder story, since it's made obvious to be a much bigger issue than that. It's shrunken when you treat a character like Danny's so broad and generically.
Ultimately, watching this film, you get the sense that all the research done prior to making it was in the reading of THE SUN's article ("Honey trap girl is found guilty"). I mean it's almost as if they didn't actually talk to the Mother. We know no more than we already did and that's really strange when you not only have the Mother on hand but all seven of the convicted caught and locked up. I'm certain none of THOSE kids were approached during the making of this film - how laughably amateur!
This was the one chance to enlighten an audience of angry, narrow minded Brits repulsed by gang culture, so that we don't continue to ignoring or even try to blitz it but embrace and attempt to fix it.
Very lazy filmmaking and the poor treatment of a case like this. Shakilus Townsend and many other murdered black, British teenagers deserve better.
