Okay, look, I can't write an entire review like this, I haven't got enough street cred to do justice to the lingo. Instead, I shall speak in Her Royal Majesty the Queen's English to describe this wonderful film that first-time director Joe Cornish (one half of BBC 6 Music's side-splitting comedy duo "Adam & Joe") has bestowed upon us.
The film is set on Bonfire Night in South London, specifically inside a towering council estate. Living in this block of flats are a gang of teenage hoodlums -- Moses (John Boyega), Pest (Alex Esmail), Dennis (Franz Drameh), Jerome (Leeon Jones) and Biggz (Simon Howard). Fittingly, we meet them as they mug innocent nurse Sam (Jodie Whittaker, "St. Trinian's") on the street, threatening to stab her if she doesn't give them her phone, money and wedding ring. Well, these will surely be a delightful bunch of lovable protagonists.
As the street robbery proceeds, a fireball bursts down from the sky above and smashes into a car on the road. The teens go to inspect the wrecked automobile, surprised to find a vicious creature of unknown origin lying within the vehicle. It has no eyes, no ears, no nose, but it has a rather sharp set of gnashers attached to its saliva-drooling gums. Shocked and confused, they chase the creature when it runs away, and callously beat it to death in a shed. Again, a lovely set of protagonists we have on our hands here.
So, they go back to their council estate, of course taking the dead alien body with them for some possible dosh, and pay a visit to their drug dealer, Ron (Nick Frost, "Paul"). After peering out the window, they realise they might be in a spot of bother -- amongst the banging and crackling fireworks on display there are other fireballs plummeting down to Earth, and these ones ain't no fireworks.
It is then up to our band of very unlikely heroes to protect their unsuspecting housing estate from the colony of ruthless alien invaders, using baseball bats and squirt guns to defend themselves -- but is it a proper planetary invasion, or do they just want revenge for the murder of their alien friend?
"Attack the Block" is definitely an ambitious directorial debut from Mr. Cornish, the English comedian also serving as the film's writer. His brainchild is a small-scale British production that acts as a big-budget American sci-fi blockbuster, complete with stunning cinematography and superb SFX. It's not often we get the blockbuster treatment in our neck of the woods, but boy do us Brits know how to do it in style. Take that, America!
Think of the film as a cross between Menhaj Huda’s “Kidulthood" and Joe Dante's "Gremlins." There's the sneering, cap-sporting yobs on one end, and a swarm of mouth-frothing, bloodthirsty monsters on the other, pinned against each other with endlessly entertaining results. Big on action, "Attack the Block" is an extremely thrilling experience, gleaming with a self-knowing sense of humour that’s worthy of many, many chuckles.
The supposedly heroic kids all chat in South London street slang, the kind that makes them sound like they're reading their text messages aloud. Some may find this grating on the ears (Americans have actually been offered subtitles so they'z can understand what we sayin', bro), but to me it really develops the setting of this inner-city urban environment. I'd say the slanguage is exaggerated, but on second thought, I hear teens talking like this damn near every single day, so I'm gonna label it as pretty darn authentic.
Their characters are all hoodies, thieves and generally just petty criminals, all about 15 or 16 years of age, which will prove them challenging to relate to for many viewers to begin with. However, I defy anyone to not feel them growing on you as the film progresses, their personalities far too amusing to remain detestable. Sure, they steal, rob nurses and beat newly discovered species to death, but damn they're funny.
The villainous aliens are spectacularly designed, given a look that is both original and actually quite inspired. They have the figures of gorillas, their bodies big and bulky, their fur so black that their bodies are literally just a furry shape of pure and utter darkness, like a walking, snarling silhouette of evil. With their lime green fangs glowing in the dark and their fur as dark as a black hole in space, they are fabulous to look at and are especially menacing as they bound down streets and crawl up the sides of buildings like miniature King Kongs.
More tongue-in-cheek than all-out comedy, "Attack the Block" is a spellbinding B-movie horror and a brilliant collision of chav culture and murderous extraterrestrials. Cornish's cinematic debut is an absolute triumph, both thrilling and funny at the same time, making for one of the best and most thoroughly entertaining alien invasion movies in yonks. Trust!
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment