Bullet Boy

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.

'Bullet Boy' is an understated drama about an ex-convict trying to go straight in London's black community. The piece is nicely assembled and acted, and makes good visual use of its Hackney setting, but there's nothing in the story which is ultimately surprising. I also have one quibble: the film features a fair amount of gun usage, but we don't see any underlying criminal activity, which is (I think) usually the root cause of shootings. On the other hand, one strength is that the world of the characters is not depicted as a squalid ghetto, but rather as a place in which one can imagine real people living in. Overall, this is not a bad film; but it is a little bland.

Saul Dibb's debut feature stars So Solid's Ashley 'Asher D' Walters as Ricky, a parolee returning to Hackney's infamous murder mile. He is hoping to remain on the straight and narrow but this proves difficult as he's re-encompassed by the same violent climate he left and the need to maintain honour while preserving his reputation is the code to live by.

There is little to fault this British Movie. Shot on 16mm and on a tight budget of ca.48k, what we are given is a fly-on-the-wall view of life on the streets and the futility of Britain's gun culture. This didn't have to be shot in Hackney, but anywhere would have suited the scenario of disadvantaged youths trying to keep their heads above water in the increasingly gangsterish streets of Britain.

Dibb, the director, is very careful not to preach to us. The closet similarities and comparisons made will point an out-dated and clichéd finger at John Singleton's 'Boyz in da Hood' and Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing'. Although these two films crystallised (inner) racial feuding and violence in America, Dibb keeps his message a little closer to his chest as the audience decide who's the true hero, villain or victim - if any. This film plays as a theatrically scripted tragedy, which is sensed from the opening where the young Curtis (Luke Fraser) goes to meet his paroled brother.

It is hard to pinpoint the film's genre and exactly what the plot is. Largely unknown actors, a purpose-built raggedy script (with plenty of improv) revolving on just-happen-to-be circumstances leads to a sense of a horrific reality. Here, kids try to become men too young, and violence is the sole key to respect even if it is borne from a childish dispute like a minor traffic incident as in the film.

It works and it works very well. All character development is sidelined for a streamed view of street life. Clare Perkins plays the mother who has no control over her boys despite her strenuous efforts, the reformed Preacher (Curtis Walker) and Wisdom (Leon Black) all have their own back story, which we are told in a sentence, focusing our attentions on the Brothers. Each character represents a social template in one of life's cycles, Ricky and Wisdom are the present and his younger brother could easily be the future while the rest of the cast represent those inadvertently embroiled in street politics and gun ethics.

Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja delivers a haunting theme to end the movie, as the filmmakers ask no questions but leave them in sight. Dibb, who is traditionally a documentary maker is all too aware of how to enter the psyche of gritty subject matter with previous works on street life and shop lifting he wants us to see all the angles, the choices these people make and their consequences. It is then up to us to draw our own conclusions.

Ricky wants to be the ideal brother for Curtis but the street will not let him. He wants to knock some sense into his over zealous friend Wisdom but loyalty won't let him. Curtis is a lovable character because he has the innocence of youth, which his environment is too eager to snatch as (peer) pressures encroach on him and his brother's good intentions are contrasted by the actuality of his actions. Curtis is the natural choice to become a Bullet Boy, like others around him and the responsibility is left to the one character that should traditionally have none.

This is a powerful fete in film-making and serves topic matter that is relevant and garnished with gritty realism that you cannot help but feel for all those involved.

I would like to start off saying that I appreciated the movie for dealing with the black community in London. No rude cockney gangsters, catchy crime scams or laughably stupid dope dealers. The family this movie deals with is a single mum home with two sons, one just out of prison, the other still too young to be involved in anything hazardous, but looking up at his brother and already copying some of his ways.

I enjoyed the language and the characters who were all convincing and complex enough but, how carefully put down they were, the more obvious and stereotypical were the things happening to them. Everything going from bad to worse, who plays with fire is gonna get burnt. And then the ultimate contrast of either sinking into crime and sin (devil), or choosing the righteous path and go to church every Sunday (god).

This easy moralism hurt the rest of the film. It made things predictable. It was like a newspaper article collage, one shock after the other. It took away much of the complexity that I found in the characters themselves. It really is a shame because the development of the characters could have been much more subtle and would have fit in better with the style of the movie that deals with a gritty context matter but managed to use a soft and sometimes almost dreamy camera and score, not unlike other recent British films, such a 'Morvern Callar' and '16 Years of alcohol'.

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