Riot

This is most emphatically not yet another football hooligan movie. It's not Nick Love's The Sweeney either. In fact the film I was constantly reminded of was the 2011 film Rampart, because like that this is an exploration into the psyche of a dark avenging angel police officer. The film wants to be an examination of Broken Britain, or more specifically a broken London and, more successfully placed into the mix is the 2011 riots, the Afghan war, unemployment, sexual abuse, rising urban crime including drugs and gun crime. Unfortunately the script has a tendency only to pay lip service to these issues but somehow this less deeper exploration is perhaps fitting given that we see how these things affect Damien, a disturbed and damaged individual who you just now is going to reach boiling point from the off, you're just not sure how.

G.B.H wasn't entirely irredeemable, Nick Nevern did have a great brooding intensity that he brought to his lead character, and Kellie Shirley(whose acting has grown since her stint on EastEnders) is affecting. For me though, that's it for the saving graces. The rest of the acting is poor, Steven Berkoff for example doesn't seem to have a clue as to what to do and how to play his role. Though in all fairness they weren't helped at all by sketchily written characters that were largely sidelined throughout the film, the juiciest side character was Con O'Neill's but that is not saying very much. The dialogue resorts to a lot of clichéd banter, while the way G.B.H is shot looks cobbled together(like some of it was done in one stretch with a gap and then in another stretch after). And I do have to agree about the wildly inaccurate portrayal of the police force, it is not only inaccurate but completely unbelievable too. There was a good story in G.B.H somewhere, no matter how many times we've seen its plot points on other films and television shows, the structure was just so clumsy and disorganised with no tension that that potential didn't ever come out. It was also very difficult to be drawn in by, it was purposefully grim and bleak which is not a problem in any way, it was just dealt with in such a tedious and heavy-handed way that the tone was more wearying(and increasingly so) and overly-aggressive in alternative to tense and properly involving. Overall, apart from the leads I found it by difficult to be drawn in by G.B.H. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Review: This is just your typical violent English movie with your usual dose of swearing, sex and violence. The acting in the movie was quite terrible for the leading actors, but the storyline wasn't too bad. I also though that the film looked pretty cheap and it just seemed to go round and round in circles. By the end of the film it just seemed like the director wanted to show how much policemen can get away with, which wasn't a smart way to portray the people who are supposed to protect public. Anyway, I wasn't that impressed with it.

Round-Up: I wasn't expecting that much from this movie so I wasn't that disappointed. Some of the scenes were pretty graphic, but there wasn't any real moral to the story. For a low budget movie, it does have a bit of substance but nothing worth watching again.

Budget: £1.5million Worldwide Gross: N/A

I recommend this movie to people who are into there violent British movies. 2/10

As of this writing, this film is sitting at a sub-3 star rating. Seriously? Sure the film's got it's problems, but it's pretty well written, pretty well acted, and solidly put together. Maybe England is going through a rash of hooligan films that I'm not aware of and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? That...or people are just kind of idiots.

OK, maybe idiots is a harsh term as there's no accounting for taste, but this film actually works pretty well on most levels. It moves along at a good clip, the characters develop well, and the story is though out. My only real gripe is the way the film jumps around between certain scenes. There's a bit of that "three weeks earlier" crap that makes it a bit hard to follow at times. But on the whole I'd say it's at least worth a watch.

Poor dialogue, clumsy editing, terrible story. Some nice shots in it but avoid