That powerful piece of work astonished me. A real hit in the face. More a social drama, bloody, brutal at the most, more than a thriller - which is absolutely not - or a common crime flick. Anyway nothing to do with the other UK crime films, craps, which are directly released in DVD, craps that try to look like Tarantino or Guy Ritchie's movies. The guy who made this gave all his guts, his wrath, his pain, his soul, his blood. Poignant scenes, moving sequences, British are really the masters in the social field: see Ken Loach.

This film started out pretty well, it his relatively high production values and felt quite slick. It has parts where the characters are introduced with a brief rap, most of which were passably decent and introduced them well. The first hour was honestly not bad. The basic stories of Kirby and Chris' power struggle, and the induction of the kid into the gang had a ring of potential truth to them. Ed's search for his phone, and marketing of a prostitute to to a host of kebab shop owners felt a little more silly though. At the resolution of these story lines, the film just got stupid. Aaron found the gun and all of a sudden there's a baby on his train and he's keeping it around for some reason and the mother is naturally an escaped sex slave from a secret Russian BDSM brothel. Coincidentally the mother runs into the prostitute from the last story line and they go on a quest to find the baby. Oh yeah and then Aaron and Ed sell the baby but five minutes later the mother sees Aaron walking around and they go and try to get the baby back. Honestly you would think, based on this film and how many of the characters know each other, that London had a population of about a thousand people. Then the pub just happens to set on fire and also Chris wants his gun back. Why Chris wants his gun back is unclear, as he throws it into the river soon after getting it as he used it in a murder. Quite why he didn't just let Aaron keep it, as there was no way of tracing it back to him if Aaron was ever caught, I don't know. Anyway Ed goes on a hero mission to save the baby and dies of course, then they give Chris his karma and have him arrested. In fact, practically every character who is dislikable ends up dead. The filmmakers were clearly very conscious of appealing to people's most basic desire for 'justice.'Overall, the acting was decent, soundtrack okay, the characters did ridiculous things and felt nothing like real people, and the plot was like... something a twelve year old would write as a first draft.

I don't like to write many reviews, but when I discover a movie that I think it is underrated, it makes sense to write about it:)Although there are many characters, you do not get to know very well any of them and at the same they all have something in common: a horror east-London story-line that tangles them.I guess the movie seems very rough and tough from many points of view, specially to someone who has not been in that part of London, nor has seen anything similar. To all the other ones, this seems to be just another slice of live that brings up sometimes the worst and best of people.There is a positive message in the end, but boy..you have to through hell and back before you get there!I am having hard time recommending the movie, although from technical point of view it was almost without flaw, mainly because the abuse of using too many sad stories at the same time. Limiting the number of main characters to only 2-3 would've had the same effect.Anyway, kudos to the director for a well done movie, albeit I will never want to watch it again...

I must admit that 45 minutes in I wanted to switch this off. It was almost unbearably depressing and grim, however I am glad I stuck with it through to the end. I don't know if this depicts normal life in inner city London or not but from news reports I wouldn't imagine it was million miles away. The film paints a bleak picture of people stuck in an almost lose lose situation although of course ultimately you shape your own destiny in life. For a directorial debut this is amazingly assured. I have not a fan of Plan B as it's not really my music taste but he is obviously a hugely talented guy. The film follows various people and their stories throughout the film and these gradually intertwine. The fact that all the stories are interesting as well is also impressive as you rarely get this in movies that mingle multiple stories. The film boasts a largely unknown cast which makes the almost uniformly excellent performances all the more staggering. There is little of the usual cockney wide boy caricature to be seen here. I felt the performances of Riz Ahmed and Anouska Mond were particularly good. The film in many ways reminded me of Trainspotting but with an even darker edge and the film is almost on a par with that one. This is a brutal and tough film to watch but one which really pays off with a great ending. This by word of mouth will end up being a cult classic of that i'm pretty sure.