This is a wonderful film, featuring a almost all black cast apart from a couple of white characters, one being (Mel Smith in a cameo role) as a boss and the other(karl Howman) a friend of the young black men. It deals with the race relations in a brutal way, and is quite hard to watch at times but this is what proper film making is all about imo. It has its fair share of funny moments as well, like the main character having to take his truant little bro to school but he keeps running off trying to avoid going. A film about race,family,friends and love in a well acted and competently directed film without being flashy which it does not need to be. The scenes with the token white friend and and his black pals are the strongest scenes in the movie. Also a final point which it is great to see what certain parts of London looked back then, grim and uninviting.

Nice to see via the comments and the message board that this film was held in high regard . I remember it well . It's one of those tough , gritty realist type movies broadcast late night on Channel 4 sometime in the late 1980s when that particular channel was interested in showcasing challenging home grown talent . In those days my peers and myself would nearly always be watching movies on VHS cassette and would involve people with American accents suffering terrible and gory deaths via mad axemen and monsters . It'd be a novelty in seeing a serious film , never mind a British produced one and this type of movie in look and feel would be occasionally attempted by Ken Loach or Alan Clarke . That said perhaps the novelty of seeing BABYLON gave it a reputation that possibly isn't that deserved As I started to watch it again I really found asking myself I'd be able to make it all the way through to the end credits down to one reason - the characters talk in heavy Jamaican tones . I did recognise the Jamaican phrase for " Good afternoon . How are you my friend ? " which is " Hey mon " but after that I was totally puzzled as to the conversations taking place . Just about every black character in the film talks like that with the ironic exception of the one bloke who does look like he's just stepped off the boat from Kingston and you're now able to understand what's going on to an extent. Nice to know he also has a white friend because that means there's at least two people I can understand . There's other white people too but they're incapable of opening their mouths without a tirade of racial insults spewing from it . And this is the problem with BABYLON - there's hardly one single likable or sympathetic character in it and is rather dated in every aspect One can see the point the film is making . It was produced in 1980 , the year before the Brixton riots and a time when institutionalized racism was the norm and what BABYLON deserves very great credit for is in its sophistication in not painting society as " White people = rabid racist oppressors , Black people = poor innocent victims " . What I mean by this is that several white characters mouth racist insults but you see them having a motive for being angry . A mechanic walks out in the middle of work earning the ire of his employer . If the boss was truly racist would he have given a black kid a job in the first place ? A group of reggae fans are having all night parties in a lock up garage thereby upsetting the residents nearby . Now if the actions were done by a group of white chavs the outcome would possibly have the same outcome ? The police are painted as racist bully boys but you'd to have to a very naive reader of The Daily Mail not to believe there's a large element of truth in this especially taking on board the location and the period it's set in and explains to an extent the motives of most of the black characters who do have very large chips on their shoulders. This level of sophistication where the audience are allowed to make up their own minds as to the causes of racism or indeed if we're racist simply because we're human and want to belong to our own tribe is left open ended but is striking in the refreshing and ambiguous way it's put forward . Also interesting that a couple of characters are portrayed as being violent " queer bashers " and if you really want to really confuse and upset a bleeding heart liberal just show a couple of black guys beating up a homosexual . You wouldn't get that in EASTENDERS BABYLON isn't a great film and because of the language problem makes it rather inaccessible for a mainstream audience along with the dated look . It is however a good example of a British realist drama and despite being a political film is thankfully free of the political overstatement that Loach might have brought to the story . I've also had a look at the resume of the director Franco Rosso and was surprised and a little sad that his career didn't really progress beyond this movie because with a couple of more films under his belt I'd be very interested in seeing what sort of director he'd be like as he matured . As it stands BABYLON seems a career highlight of a far too short career

As an avid follower of British cinema, I like to think that I've seen most of the worthwhile films that our country has produced. But I'm always on the lookout for films that I haven't seen, but sound interesting, and so I stumbled upon Babylon, then tracked it down on DVD and gave it a watch. Co-written by the writer of Quadrophenia, and directed by an Italian born director, and starring Brinsley Forde of Aswad, comedian Mel Smith, and Karl Howman, perhaps best known these days as the face of Flash household cleaning products, it seems an unlikely sort of project, which perhaps, not surprisingly due to its sensitive subject matter dealing with the institutionalised racism of late 1970's England, seemed to receive little attention when it was released. This is a shame, as although not quite a classic film, the director, Franco Rosso, who sadly was unable to generate funding for any future film projects after making this film, shows that given time he could have been a significant voice in British Cinema. Babylon is a film made by a gifted director just finding his feet, with some memorable scenes littered throughout. It strikingly portrays working class London in the late 1970's as a pretty unforgiving environment, though, the drab atmosphere of the setting is frequently punctuated by tracks from the film's reggae soundtrack, bringing you into the characters' world as they seek solace from these surroundings in the reggae music they play through their cherished sound system.Babylon should definitely have a place in anyone's top 100 British films of all time. For me It only narrowly falls short of classic status because the ending feels a tad abrupt, and the whole film does feel like it does not run quite as seamlessly as it should. Perhaps that's down to the editing maybe. Even so, I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in British films.

Strange film really. I didn't see it at the time, was born the year it was made, perhaps that's why i have such a problem with it - it is a film of its time, dealing with issues of its time, issues which have changed (thankfully) quite a lot since my birth. But I'm really pleased I saw it (watched several times in fact to try and put my finger on what it was that bothered me so) and pleased I bought the 2007 Italian released DVD for other film on there - Dread Beat An' Blood - which is a little bit special. Its about dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who is a total hero and great in front of the camera, but its also a fine piece of film-making by Franco Rosso. Essentially, the title says it all - Babylon - a society based on 100% wickedness, rotten to the core. In the film's dystopian vision of late 70's South London our hero succumbs to overwhelming pressure from ALL sides only to a take a defiant stand in the final scene. However it seems to have shot itself in the foot: In an effort to create SUCH a bleak world, the characters themselves are undermined - how much can you sympathise (in movie world!) with someone who has essentially just made poor choices and let down everyone around them? The final act of redemption, (or is it stupidity, suicide, throwing your life away?) is unconvincing and seems to owe more to punk than it does the reggae Sound System culture this film supposedly celebrates. And it doesn't, in my view - Bizarrely!?! After watching several times in disbelief I feel this was another casualty of the script's agenda of mounting pressure from 'Babylon-system' which never lets up and permits no refuge or shelter (sound systems included). Is there any point making a film called Babylon without a sign post to a way OUT of Babylon? Commendable as it is to try and make a hard hitting film that doesn't follow a standard pattern of good triumphing of evil - this is in fact evil triumphing over good, a much more interesting creative proposition - it IS a cheesy film, it does NOT pretend to be proper social realism or documentary-like, and most importantly: it just DOESN'T WORK. I mean, when the Rastafarian God, Jah, is repeatedly said to be 'a TERRIBLE God' (in a perversion of Rastafarian religious rites!?!) something is wrong. (Its terrible as in vengeful btw). Sadly, (so very sadly), I found myself wondering if the fact that this film's writers and director were WHITE had anything to do with confusion and contradiction this film drowns in.But then, as i stated at the beginning, it could well be ME. Race relations in Britain were pretty much at an all time low around the time this film was made, Thatcher had only just come into power and that seemed to signal more conflict and a drift toward colonial-type values, not welfare values. But, crucially for our purposes, the reggae records of the time tell a different story! True, all the buzz-words of the time like 'revolution' and 'resistance' are there but its always with 'righteousness' and LOVE. Or at least that's the way I see it, and that's basically my point... as viewed from 2008 - happier times.Or perhaps I'm simply reading too much into it: it's low budget cult trash! - one of my favourite genres btw : ) Should this stuff stand up to examination at all? My answer is: Like most low budget cult trash, it DIDN'T REALIZE it was low budget cult trash! It feels like it has 'something to say', and of course most things always do on one level or another. Obviously you have to be a little more forgiving - and because its a film about Sound Systems shot in Brixton for fcuks sake! : ) (And Brixton looks awesome.) But I say its asking for it, because more than anything all these errors make it fail as a piece of ENTERTAINMENT: When 'the cool white guy' is head-butted to the ground for 'talking black' by his best friends and they do/say nothing but just step over him because they're upset their sound system has been smashed up by nasty racists kept awake at night by the noise, its unbelievable. When they portray sound system members smashing a rival's headlights (Jah Shaka's!?!?!), threatening each other with machetes and big dogs and just general poor sportsmanship, (all be it kiiinda lightheartedly), its ridiculous. And Jah, a TERRIBLE God? I don't think so. ; )A missed opportunity really, all the more tragic because Britain has precious little Black Cinema from these times. Strange too, as the cast included Aswad's Brinsley Forde and Jah Shaka, the excellent music is by Matumbi's Denis Bovell, and the director, Franco Rosso, despite being an Italian, was South London-based and had a long association with Sound Systems - he even claims to have enlisted help of black Brixton youths with the actual writing of the script. And Rosso had just made the Linton Kwesi Johnson documentary, more than adequate grounding for Babylon I'd say. Strange it would fail in the ways it does.That just leaves, the other writer: Martin Stellman - who at the time would have been riding high on the success of Quadrophenia, which is fcuking DODGEY, along with everything else The Who ever did. And was probably brought in at a late stage as a 'safe pair of hands'. Its got his fingerprints all over it. I blame him!!! ; )Go see it!(if anyone has comments about this rant or the film in general, I'm interested to hear, post a review yourself or we can discuss it on Babylon's IMDb notice board - thanks! Matt)