Sugarhouse

I got an invite to see a Preview screening of Sugarhouse Lane last Wednesday & it was a well attended affair in a Hotel screening Room.

The film is set in London, but not the tourist type London you'll have seen in most British Films. Thankfully there's no shot of 'The Gherkin' building which seems to have plagued all films set in London since around 2000.

Most of the action (if thats the right word) takes place in around a derelict warehouse in/or around a Council estate. D takes Tom to this place in order to do some business but has other plans. Unfortunately this is were the films Stage origins let it down because, the film becomes wordy & rather confined to this single location. The film is beautiful to look at, the DoP should be very proud of themselves. I saw the film in the company of a Film Director and that was a comment he agreed with. Look out for the final Crane shot at the end of the film which is just great..

As to the performances, there's a really great performance from Ashley Walters as D a Crack Addict/Hustler. IMHO it much more than the clichéd "Blackman Druggie" part British Black actors are asked to play. It's a really convincing turn as an addict up there with Willie Ross's Drunk Father in 'Rita, Sue and Bob Too' and Samuel L. Jackson's performance in 'Jungle Fever'. There's also a good performance from Andy Serkis as Hoodwink a Northern Irish hard man. Oh, look out for the girl who plays Hoodwinks girlfriend I think in the titles she's called 'Pregnant Girl'. She's in the film for no more than 5 - 6 minutes tops but there's something really striking about her.

I must admit I was expecting something different but that said, I was pleasantly surprised. The film is much better than say other films set in London with Urban theme's like 'Breaking and Entering'. A film well worth having a look at when or if it gets a UK Theatrical release.

Sugarhouse is an uncomfortable watch, with painful, often ugly violence and dialogue that is more often than not shouted. It turns to become, mainly a two-man show with white middle-class, jacket-wearing Steven Mackintosh who ventures into ghetto-land somewhere in decaying urban London to buy back a gun used in a murder and black, crack-addict Ashley Walters.

Being far nearer in real life to Mackintosh than Walters (by a far margin!) it wouldn't be right for me, myself to say how realistic the dialogue is, or the scenarios. So, I'm not going to try and pretend to say things like it's 'hip' or 'savvy', but looks and sounds really not very nice.

Walters, plus his chums generally give Mackintosh a hard time, over how a privileged a life he has and much angst and verbal ricocheting carries on. When director Gary Love's camera swings back and forth to them, it's an odd duet experience, so chalk and cheese.

Andy Serkis has been accused of overacting in Sugarhouse and we certainly get our money's worth from his psychopathic drug-dealer character. We see him at the start, nude, stretching his muscles and revealing his many tattoos. More revealing than is necessary, some critics have said, but it gives us a very clear indication that here we have a shaven-head bully more akin the Hannibal Lecter than Peter Pan.

As such, as Hoodwink, he is the colour and propulsion in this film. It would be quite dreary without him and who's to say what is over-the-top? It's of a type of person that thankfully I don't know and hopefully never will. His Irish accent seems pretty good too.

The film certainly came under my radar and watching it on BBC2 now, I was surprised that it was made 5 years ago and I'd never heard of it or referred to.

I saw this at a preview screening... it was a great atmosphere! Ashley Walters really impresses, are those really his teeth? He looks like he's been living in a sewer for a couple of years! He's trying to sell this gun to middle-class Steve Mackintosh, who has found himself for the first time on the wrong side of town as Walters takes him to his home- an abandoned old warehouse. Andy Serkis plays Hoodwink, who's this bloomin scary Ulster man who's somehow found himself on the local estate with his pregnant girlfriend and now runs it, oh and he's the original owner of this gun and he's not too happy that it's gone missing!

A special mention i think should go to Hoodwink's three henchmen/stooges. They haven't had much of a chance of being mentioned in the build-up to this film, especially when you have Walters, Mackintosh and Serkis starring, but as you will see they turn in really good performances that added to the film no end.

This is a side of the capital that is hardly ever shown in films and it was interesting to see, definitely an intention of the makers to juxtapose this ragged side of London with the brand spanking new (one shot pans up from the estate to a view of Canary Wharf that's just right next to it). The film's also quite bloody, but also had the audience roaring with laughter at some points! The characters were very well constructed and there are very good free-flowing performances by all the actors (director was previously an actor as well i think, so just let them get on with it)... well worth going to see.

Sugarhouse is the story of a middle class man trying to buy a firearm in the UK, and all the things that go wrong with that transaction, from the crackhead who is selling it to him, to the psychotic drug dealer who owns the gun, to the reasons he wants the gun in the first place.

This isn't a witty and convoluted Guy Ritchie gangster film, these characters are low-level criminals engaging in their day to day enterprises with the addition of a middle-class gun buyer throwing everything out of kilter.

Andy Serkis played the psychotic drug dealer with his usual flair, you could almost smell the rage he was putting off. The other actors did a fine job of representing their characters, production values were high, dialog was good.

This is an above average crime drama, with a lot of dialog and some action thrown in during the more intense moments. My American ear had some trouble with the accents, but in general it's easy to understand what's going on and why.

British crime movies are hardly a rarity in this day and age, but "Sugarhouse" stands head and shoulders above 95% of the other releases in the genre. On the surface, it's a remarkably simple movie about two troubled men and the problems that arise when one tries to sell a gun to the other.

Both Stephen Mackintosh and Ashley Walters deliver incredible performances as the two men, and are supported by an equally impressive offering by Andy Serkis as 'Hoodwink', the local drug-lord who was the original owner of the stolen weapon. Serkis oozes menace whenever he's on-screen, and his sudden bursts of violence are frightening to behold.

The writer deserves an equal share of the credit. I've lived in London for several years and can confirm that the terms and slang used by the characters are authentic. Secondly, the story is well written and keeps the interest throughout; a palpable feeling of tension and dread growing as the situation grows steadily worse. If there's any complaint to be made, it's most likely that the story could have found a more comfortable place on the stage than the screen due to the minimal number of locations used (most of the action takes place within one warehouse) and the long (but always interesting) conversations between characters.

I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy watching "Sugarhouse" due to my overexposure to British crime movies, but i'm glad that I did. It was one of the better movies I've seen recently and surprised me in how well-made it was. Long after the eerie final scene, i find myself thinking back to those two broken men who met at a crucial point in both of their lives and subsequently changed each other - for better or for worse.

If you're a fan of serious crime movies such as "Reservoir Dogs" of "The Long Good Friday", it would be well worth your time to take a look at "Sugarhouse".