With the recent London and Manchester riots that had the news media awash with masked, hooded kids causing as much chaos as humanly possible, it makes you look at the youth of today as vile hostile entity's. Would you feel safe being out at night knowing that the moment you walk around a corner you might become victim to a gang of hooded kids? I know I get nervous and i've lived in the same area for 28 years. So when films, made in the U.K about inner city urban kids, come out that unfortunately re-enforce the stereotype that these 'chavs' are criminals, such as films like, Shank, One Day and Harry Brown, do we want to see a film that portrays these kids as heroes and not the villains that the media wants us to perceive them as? Well if it involves mother fucking aliens we do. ATTACK THE BLOCK is that film, the brain child of British comedian Joe Cornish, one half of comedy due Adam & Joe best known for their Adam & Joe show and their XFM radio show, who here makes his directorial début. A genre film set with in the boundaries of reality, much like Edger Wright's début, Shaun Of The Dead. ATB follows a group of kids from a high rise housing block in South London, who after nervously mugging nurse Sam, as she makes her way home one night, witness something fall from the sky, crashing into a car. Going to investigate, the kids get attacked by a creature. It manages to escape and the kids decided to go and kill it. They corner it in a shed and do the deed using fireworks and sticks. They take it back to the block and take it to Ron, the resident drug dealer. Unfortunately the death of the creature attracts a large invasion force of alien creatures and it's up to the kids to protect the block and save the world...well south London..
So we have this gritty urban look at kids on a housing estate, but what ATB does that none of these other British urban movies do is portray these kids as just kids, They have to phone their parents, they talk about video games like Fifa or Gears of War and just act all hard but at the end of the day they are just 14 and 15 year old kids that unfortunately live in a rough poverty stricken area. The Kids in ATB are kind of like the ones in E.T, although maybe not as suburban as those and they love weed and hanging around. They ride BMX' like the E.T kids, There's even a bike chase (sorely missing from Super 8), and in one scene, very reminiscent of a scene in E.T, is the scene in which the kids corner the alien creature in a shed, much like when Elliot, his brother and their friends go to the garden shed to find E.T. It's little homages like this that really does make the film stand out for genre fans like my self, but unlike the sweet nature of Spielberg's film, ATB ends the shed scene in a more violent way. Cornish also throws in homages to other classic sci-fi films such as Alien, The Thing and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers but they're not done in a way where it's so obvious, unlike the Pegg and Frost film Paul which set's up a reference before revealing it and they're done in a way where viewers who might be oblivious to the references, can enjoy them as part of the story and people with a knowledge of sci-fi can sit back and go ' oh that's from this and that' and still get enjoyment from the film.
The alien design is also quite unique, opting more for a animalistic design over humanoid style, by having the aliens look like gorilla's. They have no eye sight much like the Xenomorph of the alien movies, they have glow in the dark teeth and the blackest fur. They do at times look like puppets made by the Henson workshop, which in-turn gives it a sort Labyrinth feel.
Joe Cornish' direction is first rate for a feature début and it doesn't feel like a first time outing as his control, his shots and his vision all make the film feel like a 5th or 6th film. It's that professional. Some first time horror/sci-fi directors sometimes give off an amateurish feel to their films, maybe due to the low budgets and unlike those, ATB did have a budget of $13mil so it is going to look a bit more professional but if this is the what we're getting from Cornish now, I for one cannot wait to see what comes next.
The cast do very very well, especially the kids, who deliver Cornish' dialogue with almost effortless ease, which is a testament to Cornish' ability as a writer who writes the same way these kids speak, incorporating all the slang and words that fill the streets of south London, it's easy to understand because it's not over used unlike the recent 'comedy' Anuvahood that over uses street slang or 'Jafaken' which makes it almost impossible to understand a word these people are say, in fact even with subtitles I still found almost impossible to understand.
Jodie Whittaker plays Sam, the nurse who at first is mugged by the block kids, but finds herself dragged into the battle of the block with them and as the situation elevates so does her language to a point where even the kids point out she swears to much. Whittaker is great and after seeing her in the film Perrier's Bounty, I can say she's one to watch.
Nick Frost, the tubby gentleman from that well known British rom-zom-com, here is basically playing a version of his character from that well known film, Ed. Here his name is Ron and instead of living with Shaun, he lives in a flat in the block, kind of what might be if Ed was kicked out by Shaun. He really doesn't bring anything to the film apart from some funny lines here and there. But it's always a pleasure to see him on screen in some form or another.
Another thing that sets this film apart from the other 'urban' movies, not including the aliens obviously, is the fact that this film is scored. It doesn't rely on some British grime music soundtrack but instead opts for a musical score which adds more to the film than some dub beat with shitty vocals over it.
So I have to end this review.
It's a refreshing, funny take on the tired urban thriller/drama that doesn't set out to glorify youth violence but to show that at the end of the day these kids are just kids but are in a situation in which crime is the only option, which I admire. I've read a lot of comments about racism referring to this film which I don't understand. It's a film made by white people with a black anti-hero in the form of Moses and this is racist? How about the films that make it out that blacks are superior in every way because they have money, power and can do what they want to white people, or what about the old Hollywood films that stereotype Asians such as the Charlie Chan or Mr. Moto films? There is no racism in this film and I find it insulting when people pigeon hole racism to just black people. There is reverse racism from black to whites, it's ok for a black person to call a white man honky or cracker but as soon as a white man uses the word nigger, it's racist, that is fucking bullshit, this film does not contain any form of what I just said. It's a film set on a housing estate in a rough area that just happens to have a predominantly black community. It's also anti street crime with one girl even shouting at Moses for getting involved with crime. It don't know if it was intended but Joe Cornish has written a very good anti youth crime film that just so happens to be set around an Alien Invasion. I loved it and I want more people to watch this as entertainment not because it's got kids who say things like 'Fam' or 'Blud' or expect a gritty urban thriller like Shank, this is so much more.
So check this out Blud, you get me Fam...
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