SnoopyStyle
The movie starts in a bathroom with Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) bruised and battered, while young Joanne (Georgia Groome) is cowering. They scrap together enough money for a train trip from London to Brighton. They're on the run from some dangerous gangsters led by Stuart Allen (Sam Spruell). The movie flashbacks to the beginning when prostitute Kelly befriends 12 year old runaway Joanne. Kelly's pimp Derek (Johnny Harris) tries to turn her.This is a gritty little indie from newcomer writer/director Paul Andrew Williams. The performance are all solid. The two leads are amazing. The movie does the bottom dwelling grim pretty well. There are some slower spots in the movie. But the great performances and the harrowing story are building to a really good dark ending. A minor complaint is that it doesn't go through with it. Instead it has a happy ending which is probably more sellable.
rowmorg
All those six or seven million Britons who are reported to be unemployable, because of low skills or poor attitude, would be viewers of this picture --- if only they could afford to see it. From their ranks are drawn all the pathetic characters: the only heroic figure is a child, around whose virginity the plot revolves. She is also the only character with any "background", i.e. a grandmother in a nice house in Devon. It's another of those films that don't have a hero that I usually excoriate and award 1 point. This gets eight, because Paul David Williams threw the script together in a weekend, raised a measly 80 grand to shoot it, and used actors and non-actors who all had a good laugh making it in a couple of weeks, and with a big dose of luck and the UK Film Council packaging it, it all came together. For the price of a big car, Williams got a movie reputation: not that he seems to have done much with it. His latest, four years later, is another cheap effort. But this is UK film-making today: cheap budgets, films thrown together in a week or two, distribution faulty. We'll have to wait and see if Williams is a sleeper like Paul Greengrass, who got two hundred million in Hollywood budgets as a reward for making the massive lie "United 93". I don't think Williams will do that, but these days you never know.
ian_bell
Few films ever live up to expectation, and when I read the blurb for this one I did wonder if there might be a similar letdown.Not likely, though.Paul Andrew Williams has crafted a drama, with thrilling overtones, which could stand almost as a companion piece to Gary Oldman's Nil By Mouth from 1997. Yet this is a film which stands entirely on its own, and even puts Nil By Mouth in the shade with an ending both realistic and poignant.The performances are excellent. Georgia Groome is disturbingly believable as a 12 year-old girl caught in the world of vice, and Lorraine Stanley, as a prostitute caught between her conscience and a need to stay alive, is similarly gut-wrenching. Also effective is Sam Spruell as a very unpleasant man called Stuart Allen, a man representative of the London underworld, and a man determined to track the above two young women down with frightening and horrific consequences.The star turn though, is arguably Johnny Harris. As Derek, he will make your flesh crawl, yet, despite his many shortcomings - and be warned, his character is repellent - there is something also vaguely humorous about him. His facial expressions when talking and listening to his boss are comic to behold. Derek is terrified of Spruell's Mr Allen, and with good reason. That terror, combined with his own greed and need to save his own neck give the film an extra dimension.This is a seriously good film.It is not easy to watch, and some of the violence and language are hard to take, but in a tepid film industry such as Britain's, the arrival of a talent such as this should be noticed.Paul Andrew Williams, it's time to make your next move. May it be as great as this one.
Jay Harris
This is a very raw, rough first feature (BAFTRA nominated) by Paul Andrew Williams.He wrote & produced the film as well.The film runs a very fast 85 minutes including 4 minutes of credits. It is a low budget film about some very unlikeable people, the sort nearly all of us would not bother with or would want know. They all are brutal & foul mouthed.However we do care, to some degree for them.The cast are mostly newcomers or featured players from TV) I never heard of any of them). I definitely want to see them in other films. Lorraine Stanley plays a working street girl. Georgia Groome (all of 14 when film was made) is new to the streets.Johnny Downs is the evil pimp, & Sam Spruell as the sadistic son of a client. They & the others in cast do fine jobs as these unsavory person.Normally I stay far from this type of film,BUT this time I was mesmerized, The hand held camera work was not as annoying as it usually is & most of my readers know I eschew foul language. Here it comes across as natural. It is like a Tarantino movie without the humour. That part I liked.Being a minor,low budget,no name cast feature from the UK It only had a short few theatre run in the USA.in Feb 2008.Look for this on Cable or rent it,I am sure you will agree it is watchable.There are some plot holes, but film moves fast & they are easily ignored.Ratings: ***1/2 (out of 4) 91 points (out of 100) IMDb 8 (out of 10)
AD
