24 heures sur 24

TwentyFourSeven is a pleasing film from director Shane Meadows who also acted and co-wrote the screenplay. Rather sensibly for a first-time endeavour, he's opted for a low-key work rather than the flashy fragmented works of other young debutantes (Guy Ritchie please take note).

The story is alarmingly simple and is thus: Alan Darcy (Bob Hoskins, excellent) helps out wayward youths in a harsh Northern town by running a boxing club. And that, basically, is it. The film perhaps plays on too narrow a canvass and it's "life is harsh" rhetoric can be mildly overstated. Witness the habitual drug user who turns up to a bout with the largest spliff in history. This guy does drugs, and in case you don't get the point, here's a telescopic joint that would bankrupt Columbia. Bruce Jones' wife-beater can also be a little one-dimensional, saved only by the actors' charm. Yet the fact that the screenplay is so modest in it's ambitions helps it immensely. A lesser talent would have thrown everything at the screen for his first full-length work, yet Meadows tells his tale and tells it well.

Dialogue that could veer towards slight pretention is saved by the wonderful Hoskins, while the real triumph is the black and white filming. This isn't the Schindler's List type of black and white; a dull grey that looks like a normal film with the colour control on your TV turned down. This is a dark, grimy black and white that takes away any contemporary restraints. Particularly notable are the scenes set against the woods and train car, and the pace they evoke. This is a film that doesn't drag but takes it's time with precision. It will entertain you and doesn't need to rush it. Impressive.

This wonderful film ironises the feel-good 'Rocky' tradition to critique an ideology - Thatcherism - that poisoned a nation still searching for the antidote. Like all Meadows films, this is great fun, with authentic-seeming performances matched by remarkable style which mixes stylised naturalism and sketch-like sequences. But looming over the larks is a depressing framing story - we know the plot ends up here. The unbearable tension is wondering how. The answer is heartbreaking, showing how the thatcher years brought Britain to the brink of fascism, where an underclass are either bullied or ignored to a point where the only means of expression is self-destructive violence. The 'poetic' voiceover is a mistake, especially for a director of Meadow's visual intelligence, but he'll get there. A great feature debut.

For my money this is the best film of the year. Best in that it didn't cost a fortune but packs as much of an emotional wallop as any blockbuster with 200 times the budget. Bob Hoskins plays Darcy, the burnt out soccer coach whose past history is told in flashback through his diary. It tells of how he trained up a team of no-hopers into becoming boxers with something to live for. Shot in luminous black and white, the feature debut of Shane Meadows is a remarkably sensitive, blisteringly funny portrait of hopelessness in Nottingham. The city has always had its problems but is also one of the most vibrant places on earth and Meadows captures the balance perfectly.

The sulphurous black and white photography adds much class to the production and the team of largely unknown actors handle things admirably.

The movie also features one of the most realistic fight scenes ever committed to celluloid when Hoskins and Coronation Street's Bruce Jones (Les Battersby) lay into one another. Both actors walked away with broken bones and this is jut one element of why 24/7 is a cut above the average movie. It's life captured on film with few romantic films. But the message is as powerful as one of Hoskins' punches in the ribs. Meadows will inevitably get more money for his next picture and will no doubt be sucked into the Hollywood mainstream which will probably be the death of him. If that happens, let's hope he doesn't lose sight of the genius which he embedded into every frame of 24/7.

In a deprived area of Nottingham, young men hang around on the streets in small groups, unable or unwilling to find anything beyond their very immediate horizon to aspire to. The result is petty crime, educational underachievement, drug use and endless poverty. Alan Darcy is a local himself but old enough to remember the old days, where it wasn't all like this and back when a local boxing club helped to engage the youth and engender pride in themselves and their surroundings. With sponsorship from a local "businessman", Darcy sets up the club and uses his natural charisma to win over a handful of members bit by bit. However with negativity engrained throughout the community, the fight to aspire is not an easy one.

Watching Shane Meadow's most recent film (This is England) reminded me what a talent we currently have working within British cinema and it made me revisit a few of his early films that have been screened recently as part of the BBC's summer of British film. On paper this could be a typical sports movie with a group of young men finding fulfilment and meaning through sport. However this is not Hollywood, it is Nottingham and as such Meadow's opens the film with the end – a simple scenes that sets the entire film as flashback and tells us from the very start that what we are about to watch has pretty much failed. With this knowledge in the back of our minds as we then watch the rest of the film, sentiment is kept at bay.

Of course the delivery generally helps this because it is gritty and convincing. The lack of hope and opportunity that forms the driver for the narrative is always present whether it is the characters or the bleak black and white cinematography and it is a real strength of the piece that it manages to do this while still retaining a sliver of hope throughout. It is hard for me to describe because I'm not that good a writer, but the mix of this comes off really well without coming over easy or simplistic. The conclusion is the closest that it comes to offering a "happy ending" but for me I took that more as people are people (hence we see mostly people individually or in small groups being OK) and that the situation is usually what makes the wider groups lack hope and aspiration.

Maybe this idea appeals to my liberal politics and thus I engaged with the film more, however someone from the right could also view the film as feel affirmed by the idea that you cannot help such people because they don't want to be helped. I liked the film because it can be seen in both ways and that it isn't as black and white as the pictures – just like reality there is an element of truth from all views. Although it all comes to a dramatic head, Meadows and Fraser do well to feed in the negativity throughout in the form of certain characters and situations, while also bringing others out of themselves as Darcy manages to connect them to something. Accordingly the end of the film is also a mix of failure and success. I found it touching throughout and, although it did sometimes sail close to melodrama it never really went there and came across as realistic and convincing throughout.

The cast are a big part of making this aspect of the script work. Hoskins leads the cast well with a strong performance. He does have the charisma his character needs but he also lets the strain show while also handling his own character's aspirations and frustrations well. Jones perhaps has a quite simplistic character (ie he serves a specific purpose within the narrative) but he deals with it well. The young cast are quite impressive with everyone coming off natural and convincing – something that Meadows regularly seems to be able to get from his actors. Nussbaum, Brady, Badland, Collins, Hand, Campbell and others all look like they aren't really acting for the most part, which I consider a good thing within this context. It is also worth mentioning that the soundtrack also comes over like the "12th man" of the team that is this film; plenty of great tracks and almost all of them really well used and fitted in with the film.

Overall then, an impressive feature debut from Meadows and is all the better given we are not looking back at it as "his one good moment before burning out"; conversely the strengths he showed here he has kept and built on – even if the total product has not always been as good as it was here. Gritty and realistic, this film delivers hope and depression, misery and comedy, violence and humanity and remains true to its characters and environment. It is an excellent film and criminally under-seen.

This film was one I had heard of, thought I'd like to see, but simply missed. When it came on pay-tv I made a point of taping it and I'm glad I did. In an extremely simple but effective way this film transports the viewer to a seedy english working class neighbourhood with its local 'colour' and crushing gloom, hopelessness and misery. A fair short film, in some respects I felt the tale unfinished - little by way of background, the heart of the film was the training and first competition which doesn't run too long, then - almost before you know it - its all over. Still, definitely worth a watch for some fine acting, interesting (though not overly original) plot, and fine but simple film-making. (ps although I can understand the use of b/w I'm not really convinced it was all that necessary or effective). My vote 7/10