Gassed Up

Start watching at 1h and 10 mins. You won't miss nothing I promise you. No character build up, unrealistic I mean where was everybody with their mobile phones in the air, taking Instagram selfies at the rave. Haha.

3 out of 10 for the little bit you get at the end.

Should be able to post shorter reviews because I really have nothing good to say about this. So I'll give you an idea of the dialogue just to waste the last 108 characters required to complete my review.

Know' what I mean bro innit. Bro, bro, bro, bro my fam. Did I miss anything oh hang on... Bro, oh and bro. Innit!!!!!

Urghhhh.

WHY do we keep giving any air time to this type of scutter life mentality and act like we should care if a single one of the characters does anything but wind up in a gutter or dead.

The storyline is Drama school level predictable with possibly the worst overacting you'll witness outside of WWE. The main character casting is so bad it's almost comical and you're rooting for him to get finished off in every exchange that happens which I assume is the opposite of what they were aiming for and the same goes for the equally unlikable side characters - although they at least dont freak out like a school girl at every turn of a corner.

Over egged 'waste man' style scripting is painful to have to sit through and if anyone talks like that in real life then I'd be questioning how many times they've bounced their head off a toilet seat while trying to pull up their pants half way up their legs before shuffling back off to "tell fam bout da stink in da poop room init'

Unless you're trying to learn how to not act or how to stereotype a race of people so badly that you'd be ashamed to watch them if they were your own family then I'd give this one a wider birth than you'd give StankPants as he leaves the toilet ..... Ya Get Me Fam Ting Init Bruv.

Most certainly not perfect, I'm not convinced by it I won't lie, but... 'Gassed Up' narrowly does enough.

Making your lead characters criminals is always a brave choice, you're almost setting yourself up for failure from a film point of view. I'm personally cool with a movie's main lot not being total good guys, like 'The Fast and the Furious' is literally one of my favourite flicks ever, but it does make it more difficult to root for the people onscreen.

In this execution of making the audience do the aforementioned, I think this film doesn't do the best job. I appreciate the backstory we get for them, well at least for a few of them, and it does work in making you understand their point of views. However, I'm just not sure if it's enough to overcome what the characters are actually doing; it's not like they are Robin Hoods... well, I guess they actually are robin hoods (ha! Get it! Sorry!) but you get what I mean.

There's also an inconsistency in that they avoid going up a level in their activities as they know it'll bring more heat - yet not long after stating that they brazenly take it up a notch anyway. A possible 'out' is they are blinded by wonga but that's unconvincing. All this is just me saying that the writing isn't the best, in my opinion of course.

What does save this is that the feel of the film is competent, it's fairly well put together and moves along at a decent pace. The cast are also positives, with Stephen Odubola being the clear standout as Ash. Taz Skylar and Mohammed Mansaray are alright, though Craige Middleburg and Mae Muller (strange casting for the latter) are more miss than hit. I would've liked Steve Toussaint to have been used more.

Glad I watched this at the cinema though, always nice to support productions from the homeland. Two groups of two were in there with me, though one duo did decide to leave with a good chunk of the movie left; I see other reviewers have noted likewise - ouch! I can possibly see why if I'm totally truthful, but for me I just about got enough out of it. I could easily be rating this a step lower, though.

"Ash" (Stephen Odubola) lives at home with his young sister and his permanently absent or stoned mother. His dream is to start a business of his own (he likes to fix things) and to get her into rehab. To that end he's mixed up with four of his mates in a snatch 'n grab scheme using mopeds to pinch mobile phones and handbags from unsuspecting folks on the street. They sell these on to "Shaz" (Jelena Gavrilovic) who happens to be the cousin of the gang's leader "Dubz" (Taz Skylar). "Ash" finds the shoebox under his bed is gradually filling up, but when he's told his mother's medical costs are likely to run to £25,000 he realises that nicking a few phones ain't going cut it. After a raid to get themselves some new transport goes awry, with one of their number a bit too handy with the spray-on acid, they are reduced to four and given a new task. Rob a jewellery store and make some proper money. When this goes tragically wrong, "Ash" and his pals "Kabz" (Mohammed Mansaray) and "Mole" (Tobias Jowett) have to persuade their briefly ostracised mate "Roach" (Craige Middleburg) to come back and help them - because their paymasters are still demanding a sackful of loot! Up until this point, the film is actually quite decent - a diverse group of life-long mates all carrying out what they reckon are victimless crimes to make some cash. Once the violent elements kick in, though, the plot really heads south. What made it a bit different is subsumed into a rather amateurishly directed affair with implausible police chases, even more unlikely robbery scenarios and just one chunk too much of bad decision making - on and off the screen. Skylar is a man with charisma, but the rest of these characters never light up the screen or the story and by the sequel-suggesting conclusion, I'd sort of lost interest. It is worth a watch with all the "life's there for the taking" stuff going on, but it'll be on the television soon enough and I'm sure it can wait til then.

Where do you even begin with this codswallop produced by Amazon? Not one interaction between any of the characters, no matter how big or small had an ounce realism. Everything was so unnatural that you might wonder if this group of supposed actors weren't just caught in a giant butterfly net on a London estate and instructed to speak a load of cringeworthy nonsense to one another in front of a camera. No one comes out of this with any credit. If you've seen one chav movie, you've seen them all. Tune in for a laugh but do be warned; viewing this drivel for any longer than 60 seconds could cause brain damage.

Know what I'm sayin' fam?