Greenwich Mean Time

When they left school, six friends were full of hope and dreams of success. Four years later they are still trying but mostly their lives are still on the same track – with their same partners and playing in the same experimental jazzy funk combo. However when Charlie gets involved in an accident it sends shockwaves through an already troubled group; Bean goes off the rails when he sees his girlfriend with another man, becoming hooked on drugs and dealing; Rix get his girlfriend Sherry pregnant and has to try and hold the band together as Sam wants to drop the jazz aspect and bring in a new vocalist to become more commercial.

Opening with the same actors supposedly playing 16/18 year olds, this film quickly moves onto four years later where, aside from school uniform, they look exactly the same – however this jump in creditability is the least of your worries in a film that never stops adding to the plot in an effort to replace real emotion with pace. The story introduces to a collection of characters quite quickly and seems to have aimed to be realistic of life for young people in London but, as the film goes on, the base premise is opened up as each character has all manner of tragedy happen to them resulting in the film feeling far too busy as it spins towards a rather overblown conclusion. It's a shame because the people are quite interesting at the start but the script doesn't allow them to really develop as real people and so puts them in extreme lives and covers for the material's inability to really grip and involve by simply having it move very fast and always having something happen on screen. It is pacy enough to keep watching though and I'll say this for it – I was never bored, but I also never really cared for the people or found myself involved in these lives.

The direction is pretty good though, using London quite well without becoming a tourist trade film. The atmosphere of lost lives is well put across and it keeps a downbeat tone even as the plot twists become decreasingly like any life I've ever lived! The music is pretty good though even if it will probably have dated pretty badly in about ten years time – personally I quite liked the jazzy sort of jungle stuff and I like the vocalist even if she did turn it very poppy (which was the point I suppose).

The cast find themselves with good basic characters and are left with the challenge to keep them real people while their lives become increasingly exaggerated. Newman does well with his loss and makes it believable even if he has little time to put complex feelings across. Shepard is OK but his character is quite bland and it shows in his performance. I did feel a bit sorry for Waters, whose character goes the farthest and becomes rather silly and OTT by the end of the film. Ejiofor is pretty good and works well with a lot more time and dialogue than he was allowed in Love Actually (hasn't he put on a lot of weight by the way!) but it's a shame the same isn't offered to Smith who is only given a bump to carry around and little else.

Overall this is a reasonable British film but hardly any great shakes. It has pace and energy and it has tried to create an ensemble drama featuring 'real' lives but the emotion and drama is not as real as it thinks and involving stories are replaced by exaggeration as the film is unable to stop adding to it's drama. If it had been better written it could have rested on smaller events but as it isn't, it needs to keep moving for fear of stalling. In this regard it does keep moving and is never really boring but it isn't that good a film as a result but should please those who are easily won over by soapy dramas as the like.

I've seen two versions of the trailer. The first were on previews of rented videos in Tokyo. It made it look like one of those campaigns desperate to cash in on the teeny-boppers and younger 20s market. I avoided it for months thinking it was going to be high on frills, low on content. The second trailer was the one that stems from imdb. It gave a bit more of an image that it was a story, but scattered. After seeing g:mt, the trailer should've had narration to mold the pieces together therefore enticing movie-goers, or in most cases, video renters, that they would indeed be in for quite a ride, which afterwards, they'd want to go on again.

zcourser and jabsy simply wanted to add variety to the list of rave reviews g:mt greatly deserves. Fantastic job to all involved, particularly the writer, Simon Mirren, and of course, John Strickland whose vision of Mirren's story got us interested into each character. This movie is fresh in the way that it's fast paced, has YES! multi-racial characters you can relate to as well as those from which you'd rather repel. It makes bold statements we as people need to hear but makes them without preaching. The original music of the characters including a female on bass (which is cool because you don't see girls in bands enough), a dedicated brotha on the ebony and ivory, trumpet sounds with emotion and improvising vocals added on by a hot singer combining to provide an energetic yet dreamy musical background.

Although g:mt is directed to a young audience, this ain't no feel-good movie. The story is as real as it can get leading the viewer to consider the values of life and how anything can happen to change it, the values of our friends and how we treat them, and the responsibility we have of taking care of our children. The issues it attacks show us how these 22-year-olds cope with having to mature, quick.

G:MT has everything. Out of ten, I give it 9 stars.

Great viewing - young talent doing well. First third was a little slow, with the historical whiteness quite difficult to differentiate the fresh young faces. By the time the Beenz had met up with his old school friend who'd turned to less desirable habits - I hadn't remembered him for the school screans. Some gratuitous nudity - to support the young and free state of the team? The racial perspective was accurate, the paraplegic perspective also desperately sad but accurate, the music was fantastic, the plug for the Virgin air ambulance was quite commercial - a full frontal of the helicopter - in London, we'd have all known it was virgin's just by the red tail? The shootouts at the end were also a little gratuitous. I enjoyed the line about being able to see the garden. Pleased to have seen and would recommend others to see it too - should have been round longer. Hope it resurfaces to ride on the millenium wave in December.

A group of youths in London, an accident, a hold up, drugs and life in the big city. Could have been dark, depressing and tokenistic but it WASN'T. Mirren's fully drawn characters and fantastic undercutting of sentiment (a very british way) made this film one of the best (unsung) british movies I've seen in ages. It's honest, informed and has such heart, no one could fail to be engaged.

I got it out on video this weekend, sadly didn't see it on the big screen. Why was that? Where was the publicity and why haven't we seen more from this guy??

Get it out and enjoy.

Greenwich Meantime is one of the freshest, most invigorating films to come out of the UK in years. It tackles head on the issues and emotions involved with being a young person at the end of the century in London - living in the city, having no money, no direction and being in the same boat as many others. This is Simon Mirren's real strength - the ability to write honest, compelling and emotionally powerful relationships. There are several moments in this film which pass the 'tingle' factor with flying colours. I look forward to seeing Mr. Mirren's future work with bated breath and in the certainty that it will accurately reflect these times.