Michael Ledo Wild Bill (Charlie Creed-Miles) has spent 8 years in prison. He has returned home and doesn't want to go back. He has discovered his wife has run off to Spain and his 11 an 15 year old sons James (Sammy Williams) and Dean (Will Poulter) are fending for themselves and would prefer not having their estranged father in their life. Bill wants to run off to Scotland and get away from everything, but child services has a different idea.The family is thrust together and Bill tries to keep things clean in his old crack dealing neighborhood which doesn't go too well.Like most UK productions the drama sometimes crosses lines with a twisted dark comedy that looks like tragedy. Good acting. Andy Serkis of LOTR fame has a small role as the big boss.PARENTAL GUIDE: F-bombs, near sex, no nudity (bra /panties Charlotte Spencer) adult themes

Prismark10 Actor Dexter Fletcher turns to directing and armed with a small budget he seems he has turned to some friends such as Sean Pertwee, Andy Serkis and Olivia Williams to make cameos who appear for a scene or two in the film.The main performances are from Charlie Creed-Miles who is Wild Bill, and his two sons played by Will Poulter and Sammy Williams. Creed-Miles plays a man released from a eight years stretch under licence and finds out that his two young children living alone for the last nine months as their mother has hopped it to Spain.In order for them not to be taken into care he has to be a father to them and gain there respect as he had had no presence in their lives due to his stint in jail.Poulter who is better known though the Narnia films and We're the Millers gives the best performance as a 15 year old who has to work in a building site and fend for his younger sibling. He is matched by Creed- Miles who has to take responsibility maybe for the first time in his life whilst try to keep in the straight and narrow by avoiding the low life who want him to go back to drug dealing and deal with the trouble his youngest son has got himself into.The film is set in Stratford in the shadow of the London Olympic Stadium, its setting is a year before the 2012 Olympics. It does have a very cliché looking urban tower block London setting. It kinds of reminds you of all those Death Wish type films of the 1970s set in New York where you have muggers, drug dealers and rapists in every corner, far outnumbering just ordinary people getting on with their lives. What is worse you have some white people speaking black patois which is very irritating.It is low budget movie making, the film has heart, a very good staged fight scene set in a pub and apart from a paper plane flying scene very little cinematic flair, it could be something British directors such as Alan Clarke could had knocked out rather easily 30 years ago for Play for Today.

FlashCallahan After 8 years inside Bill Hayward returns home to find his now 11 and 15 year old sons abandoned by their mother and fending for themselves. Dean the older boy has found a job and is doing his best to bring up his younger brother Jimmy, but the arrival of Bill has brought them to the attention of social services. With the danger of being put into care looming, Dean forces his Dad to stay by threatening to grass him up for dealing. He agrees to stay for a week to fool social services that the boys are being cared for. Bill quickly connects with Jimmy and through this new bond starts to realise what he's been missing. He has a family, he is a father. However, their happy family is short lived when Jimmy gets into trouble with Bill's old cohorts....You would be forgiven, if you thought this was just another one of those kitchen sink type London dramas that arrived ten a penny after the arrival of one Guy Ritchie.And while this has similarities to many of those films, thanks to Fletchers great direction, and the genius portrayal of the titular character by Miles, this is one of those rare cases where a British film about a criminal trying to go straight, despite his past catching up with him, is very, very good.It helps too that the chemistry between the screen family is solid, and it's pretty believable. Apart from the typecast white guy who thinks he is of a different ethnicity, its very believable, the villains are to your typical wide boys, and it's very funny and sweet in places.It's a shame that it does carry the burden of an atypical Brit crime flick, but it's a very powerful family drama, that carries emotional depth, and a very funny streak throughout.Recommended.

octopusluke Since Guy Ritchie's 1998 feature debut Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, British drama has been obsessed with clichéd gangster movies. They're relatively low cost to make, quick turnaround shoots with huge box office opportunity. Stylistically a mixture of fifties kitchen sink drama and the angry young men fronted British New Wave, the genre today has quickly become an outmoded self-parody, in desperate need of revitalising. Along comes venerable actor Dexter Fletcher. Rising from the fag ash of Guy Ritchie's Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, his first foray into filmmaking takes the same hackneyed themes of…Hackney, and tells a new story full of satire, sincerity and heart.After eight years behind bars, "Wild Bill" Hayward (Charlie Creed-Miles) returns home to his family in their tower block home. The wife is nowhere to be seen, abandoning their two children – paternal teenager Dean (Will Poulter) and his potty mouthed brother Jimmy (Sammy Williams) – for the sunny sights of Spain with her new boyfriend.A tough nestle back in to normality, the broken home soon leads to social services reps (Jaime Winstone and Jason Flemyng) asking questions. They fend them off by pretending to play happy families, but the bossy Dean tells his work-shy dad to go straight and get a job. Doing porridge has changed the ex-drug dealer, but unfortunately the apple doesn't fall far from the tree as Jimmy is accosted by local thug Terry (Leo Gregory) as a drug mule. Fighting for his freedom on the outside, Bill steps back in to the game, saving his son and taking a quick crash course on parenthood in the process.Whilst the story is far from revolutionary, Fletcher and his writing partner Danny King have crafted a truly excellent script, which is neither excessively ghettoized, nor saccharine. The good works lead to good performances too, particularly from Son of Rambow's Bill Poultner, showing great range as the apathetic teenager turned surrogate father figure. Virtually a non-budget movie, it's clear that Fletcher went through the phonebook and asked for a few favours of his supporting cast. Everyone's here: the compelling Olivia Williams as the concerned social worker, Sean Pertwee as the no-nonsense constable who through Bill in the slammer those eight years ago and, best of all, Andy Serkis puts down the motion capture play things for a menacing performance as an East London mafioso. I wish he put down the motion capture play things and started doing more straight-up screen performances; his animated face-acting is always a scene stealer.Unfortunately there is some duds amongst all the finite work. Misfits' Iwan Rhoen is insufferable as a slang-tastic hoodlum – so much that he even starts to annoy his co-stars. Newcomer Liz White's turn as an abused call girl is too flippant and lacks character depth. The biggest disappointment comes from Wild Bill himself. Sublime as a drugged-up Billy incarnate in Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth, he is too emotionally uncharged throughout.Evenstill, it's still a brilliant debut from Fletcher. Working on film sets since the young age of ten when he played Baby Face in Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone, he clearly has a deep insight of how to craft a story, shoot a scene and carve out some solid performances. All that, plus a great ska fever soundtrack and the best pub-fight sequence since Shaun of the Dead. It's as good as a gangster film can get. Let's hope he puts down the faux-Burberry scarves and trade them in for invigorated, ambitious new material.Read more reviews now at www.366movies.com