Ninety percent on Rotten Tomatoes and the whole Aint It Cool news writing team singing its praises. Critics went crazy for it, and I’m late watching it!! The hype for Attack the Block came my way during summer 2011, I just had so much going on I didn’t have the opportunity to get out and see it. But I watched it at home and consciously saved it for a ‘special time’ as I do with many movies. I wish I didn’t have the stupid habit of putting off watching some films because ‘the time isn’t right’, time of day, day of the week kind of thing. Attack the block was my final film of the holiday break 2011 into 2012, the night before going back to work. I watched an episode of The Walking Dead with my wife while intermittently having to get up to put my 2 year old back in to bed, as he is at the age where he refuses to go to bed in any sort of calm manner. But eventually 10pm came around, and it was me and the TV and the big choice to send off an 11 day Christmas break, I chose Attack the Block.I don’t ever claim to be any kind of film buff. I like films as much as the guy who’s standing behind me and the guy standing in front of me at the cinema. My life doesn’t revolve around films like there’s simply nothing else, I am not an expert, and sometimes I may not even understand what I’m talking about. When I wrote about the camera work on ‘the way back’ – I haven’t really got a clue what that stuff involves, I can only go on what I’ve seen on DVD extras, read in a couple of books and speculate. But nobody can deny anybody that watches a film the right to write about it regardless of their level of technical film knowledge. So without trying to sound like a know-it-all, or a cynic, or an expert, I tell you what I thought of Attack the Block, but it does not mean my opinion is definitive, or any kind of hard fact. I was expecting a hell of a movie with this, so many ‘experts’ had agreed upon its alleged “greatness”, others had enjoyed it, others not so much. Opinions are to be respected. But here’s the problem. Why would you have a group of socially inept, criminally minded, careless and disrespectful, down-right smart mouthed wankers as your main characters? Because people laugh at them, and they are considered by some as ‘cool’ cause they listen to rap music, do drugs, wear baggy pants/trousers, fight, mug and terrorize others. It’s the same stupid fucking reasons the ‘hard kids’, the ‘trouble makers’ are popular in school. When I was in high school, 1992-1996, the ‘popular kids’ were the kids that beat people up, smoked, did drugs, drank beer, and hung out on the streets at night! Why? I never fucking understood it and I still don’t!!
These types of people were the main characters in Attack the Block, and I hated every go damn one of them. People like this really do exist and I will be honest, I am scared of them, they terrorize good people, they steal from good people, they kill people. The actors that portrayed these “kids” did an okay job, some more that others, but I’m looking at this from a ‘character’ point of view. To me it is practically the same thing as putting a serial murderer in the middle of alien invasion and expecting the audience to eventually sympathize with him, find him funny, and see him face danger and pending death with a new found motivation of heroism, eventually discovering the error of his ways. The kids in the center of this movie are horrible, I hated them, and I didn’t care who lived and died. In my opinion they all deserved a good ass kicking.
When I was thinking about it, I couldn’t quite understand why I thought like this with attack the block, but The Dirty Dozen, a movie in which murderers & criminals of various kinds take center stage as a heroic band of ww2 American infantrymen, is one of my favorite movies of all time. I still don’t really know, but the characters in the dirty dozen for me are slightly further away from my own reality. Snatch was full of dicks, criminals, killers, but I think I know the difference there!! They were portrayed as bumbling idiots, they had bad intentions but they were still likable for some reason, plus those types of people are also at some distance from my own reality. I grew up with having to deal with fucking assholes from council estates in England. And they still freak me out today even though I’m 31 and I live in the Bay Area in northern California. I’m not sour because I got beat up by them, or they made me feel small by calling me names, luckily that didn’t happen to me, but plenty of my friends got it good, maybe because I knew to steer clear!.
As far as Alien invasion movies go, I did enjoy the fact that it was different, it didn’t portray it on a massive ‘end of the world’ type scale, it kept it all confined to one area, one block of flats! You hardly saw any other people away from the main cast, no news reels or anything like that. It was cool in as much as it was confined to the experiences of one group of people who weren’t really equipped to deal with the situation. Some may consider it quite realistic, down to earth, relatable or whatever.
In contrast to the main group of losers, there is a young woman Sam (Jodie Whittaker) a trainee nurse who follows them along in their ‘adventure’. Unfortunately, she was one of their victims at the beginning of the movie. She does add a slightly likable element to the horrible cast, although I didn’t ever feel like I knew much about her, she just seemed like a vulnerable passer-by who gets caught up with the wrong people, and eventually begins to understand them, understand their upbringing and the deprived existences these urban kids have had little choice but to endure. Likewise it becomes evident that the mugger kids probably wouldn’t have touched her if they knew she was a neighbor, lived in their block. Another Innocent kind of character is a Stoner in his late 20’s played by Luke Treadaway, I honestly feel like these are the only two cast members that brought any inkling of credible acting into the film, Although Treadaway’s character I thought to be utterly pointless as he didn’t really possess any kind of significance in terms of the story, he was just occasionally…..there…..And then there was Nick Frost who played a dope dealer called Ron, The one thing I think of when I see Nick frost, is that he might be funny, maybe he worked for others but for me I didn’t find this Ron character even the slightest bit amusing.
Joe Cornish wrote & directed the Movie, looking on imdb, It seems like this is his debut. Joe Cornish is the ‘Joe’ from Adam & Joe show fame, English TV comedy. So what can I say about he first work, for a guy that hadn’t written & directed a feature before, he definitely made something sort of different in relation to the sorts of films that get distribution nowadays, and he made something that was, at times, slightly entertaining, and he made it incredibly well. It was nicely designed and very coherent.
I really am baffled, utterly confused as to why so many professional film critics are screaming about how good this movie is. I first heard about it after AintItCool Nordling gushed all his love out for it on AICN last summer. He pretty much dared you not to like it, used phrases like ‘you can’t over hype greatness’ and in a way, he compared it to Jaws! In terms of it being almost as revolutionary!! I tell you what, I like AICN, I have quite embraced Nordling as a writer, I think he writes mostly enjoyable reviews, but what he wrote there I now feel was almost complete rubbish, I just don’t get it, he’s not “Wrong” It’s just that I do not understand why, not just him, but why so many people think so bloody highly of this film. If I looked really really hard on the internet, I bet I would find glowing reviews of ‘in the name of the king’ or ‘AVP’ or ‘transformers 2’, I’m not putting Attack the Block in the same category as those atrocities, but what it does tell me, is that people reactact VERY differently to movies. Great movies are (mostly) universally acknowledged as being great, influential movies only become influential or classics after time has passed and their ideas, their tone, techniques, are seen to actually inspire future output from other film makers. Nordling saying ‘if this film had been made in the 80’s it would’ve been a classic’ doesn’t mean anything, it means nothing! That shit happens on its own, critics can’t tell you stuff like that is ‘going to happen’or it ‘would’ve happened’.
The problems I had with this film were too significant for me to look past. I think it’s a real shame that some English kids would be proud for these characters to represent the youth of England, because this is simply the fucking ass end of the youth of England. I felt the same watching this as I did watching Harry Brown and Eden Lake, ashamed, disgusted, and deep down wishing I was watching a different (and better) movie. I also didn’t like any of the music which I felt was very pivotal in the presentation of the film.
I do know I am missing things, important and significant things that this movie either addresses or doesn’t address for good reason. Race? I just didn’t like it very much.
