The eponymous Hallam is quickly established as a creepy, totally self-obsessed, loser. One who treats everyone with contempt. One who speaks to his father and step-mother in a way that deserves a good slap that never comes. Instead he is indulged for god knows why and consequently I didn't care about him, his dysfunctional family or his boo-hoo poor me plight.There is nothing wrong with the art direction or the acting. Both are of a higher caliber than one expects from a cheapo Brit movie. No, it's the characters and plot that stink.A character based drama should have characters you are interested in even if you don't like like them. I wasn't intrigued, I was offended. How long before I switched off? Probably 15 minutes -- the gruesome assignation up in the tree house between step-mother and son was the last straw. Life is too short to suffer tripe like this.

Maybe I just wasn't intelligent enough to get this movie, but to me, Mister Foe was just weird and twisted. Jamie Bell (who I'll always associate with Billy Elliott) was phenomenal as Hallam Foe, a seventeen year old voyeur, whose mother had recently committed suicide. Unable to cope, Hallam leaves for the big city, where he finds a woman who looks eerily similar to his mother and Hallam starts spying on her. I get that this film was supposed to be coming of age, sophisticated, and meaningful, but honestly, I just found it creepy. The film was choppy, extremely slow, and just when you thought something was going to happen, it doesn't. In Mister Foe, Jamie Bell really does show just how good an actor he has become. Aside from that, this movie is just weird.

Troubled by his mother's death, Hallam Foe (Bell) runs away to Edinburgh where he finds a woman who looks startling like his mother The nature of Hallam Foe shows a young lad fighting an onslaught of emotions after the sudden and complicated death of his mother. The suspicious nature of the death plagues Hallam and from the very beginning we have a very real and interesting mystery drama on our hands.British cinema has reawakened over the past 5 or so years. From the national biased and racist drama This is England to the sexual stereotyping social teens in Kidulthood our countries are not afraid to tackle significant and relative ideologies head on.Hallam Foe, whilst encoding conceptual meaning of peeping toms, murder and family, doesn't have the scripting to suggest it is a preacher. It feels more established, like a string of events that keeps rolling and rolling until the sharp end is strung. Everything flows very smoothly and the progression of harmless nosey Parker to obsession becomes an infatuation ideology to comprehend.The reasoning behind Hallam's curiosity is seemingly obvious and then picks up a whole different meaning after a shock night out. This 2007 picture packs a dramatic punch with Hallam's obsessive hobby and whilst the emotional depth may not be as strong as Tom Turgoose's character's bullied political stance, there is no denying the significant relevance of the, what is no now regarded as, perverse nature of the central protagonist.Jamie Bell delivers a withdrawn stance as Hallam, a clever depiction for a character who wants to conform and say what he feels whilst holding himself in his own regard. The title character is strong to lead, adds the necessary drama whilst never letting up on the controversial stalker ideology whilst never being too in your face to be a preacher.The scripting never makes you feel like you're being force fed issues and regulations like some British films do, as with East is East for example. Perhaps calling this a romantic love story with drama is too generalized. There is a significant heap of relevance and understanding to digest as Hallam tackles his way through a job with the knowledge of his step mother's nature on his conscious. Mystery, romance and drama are all present in a strongly knit script that packs comedy as well as drama.As with your typical British film the scene setting and adjustment in context is spot on. The opening scenes of Hallam walking around the country are splendid but the best shot comes when he is climbing the roofs of Edinburgh with his boss.What I must say is that whilst programmes such as Skins and films such as Brassed off all have relevance to real life is relative, Hallam Foe is perhaps a more established show that does not showcase its issues, and for that reason it is up there with the best British films. Not to mention it has the best soundtrack for any British film.

SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERSA technically gorgeous, beautifully acted movie, 'Hallam Foe' is nevertheless a niche film. Its focus group comprises smart adolescent boys who need a well made sexy movie to masturbate to as well as young men in their late thirties, who simply didn't have fulfilled the sexual adventures/relationships that they would have liked to have had. The story suffers for this specialized conceit. Early on the film skillfully suggests that the beautiful and sexy stepmother may be the killer of the leading character's, beloved mother. The first serious stroke scene has the stepmother unbelievably seducing the inexperienced 17 year old. 'Unbelievably' because in fact the movie ends by showing that she had nothing to do with the mother's death; the point of her seduction however was to imply how evil she is: not only kills the kid's mother and marries his father, but also corrupts him. So if she's not evil why would she jeopardize her marriage with someone the movie shows she is in love with (which attraction is reciprocated by her husband) to have sex with a teenager who has serious mental health issues (later on in the movie someone who knows him well describes him as 'creepy'. Yeah, he is!) But suddenly, he's cut loose by his parents and kicked out of the house (without any financial help by the way) and finds himself in Edinboro. On his second day in that city of a half a million people, he spots from a distant rooftop, walking in the street, a Doppelganger of his mother (except she's blond). Supposedly Ted Bundy's victims were quite often dark haired young women who parted their long hair in the middle, like his mum did. But the director of 'Mr. Foe' wants to make sure everyone really understands the prolonged Freudian anxiety this kid is going through and actually uses the same actress to be shown as dead mom. The mark of a not well thought out movie is finding Coincidence to smooth over story weaknesses or niche films and this major move of finding his faux mother is a classic of banal coincidence.Naughty, naughty! In closing, I do admit that this is probably the best made exploitation movie I've seen but alas, it is what it is.