After the short 'Where's The Money, Ronnie?' and the not-so-short 'Small Time', Lord Shane Meadows of Eldon's first feature film is this snappy black-and-white urban drama. Darcy (Bob Hoskins) is sick of seeing the local youths at each other's throats, so forms a boxing club to bring them together. It is a laudable plan; something to offer control and direction to a disaffected generation.Meadows' greatest talent is in presenting a truthful working class landscape sympathetically, but without being patronising. Our heroes are disadvantaged, often stricken by a fearsome domestic environment (none more so than Danny Nussbaum's Tim); and yet they are also kind, witty, hungry, and joyful. The scenes in which Darcy brings the boys to Wales, with Ashley Rowe's sumptuous cinematography and Hoskin's lyrical voice-over, are so vibrant it's as if they're filmed in colour. It's quite something to find drama in scenes of great happiness, when the conflict is left at home - but Meadows always seems to find it, and that's what makes his films vital and real.

Very Mild Spoilers AheadTwentyfour seven has some good moments as a film. It also has some good actors. Ultimately, however, it disappoints with a low key ending which borders on trite. This film falls under the category of a curiosity but not much more. The film does not come together as a coherent whole. I've seen it twice, and it feels as though something was left out of the ending. Perhaps something about optimism and the human spirit. Maybe that's the way it was supposed to feel. I rate it a D+, or 69 out of 100. The movie is in black and white, which I think actually helps it because starkness fits the movie.

"Twenty Four Seven" scores on cinematography and, in some cases, acting, but the story is inconsistent, predictable and unconvincing. Shane Meadows, the director, shows potential in his first feature movie, but overall he can't bring it together. The story is of a middle - aged man who starts a boxing club to get some youths off the street, and to give their dole - and - drugs centered lives a new purpose, but you can pretty much figure it out from there: new British cinema has never been so stale. We never understand what brings the characters together, what the kids see in their trainer (Alan Darcy, played by Bob Hoskins), why the young shopkeeper girl should be infatuated with Darcy (their relationship seems to be nothing more than an old man chasing a young bird), and we never even feel particularly sympathetic to the youngsters themselves -- they seem to be rather content collecting their dole and enjoying the easy life. I came away with the impression that the director did a social drama because he thought it would be the easiest thing to pull off, the result being a movie that has less grit and veracity than East Enders.

This wonderful film ironises the feel-good 'Rocky' tradition to critique an ideology - Thatcherism - that poisoned a nation still searching for the antidote. Like all Meadows films, this is great fun, with authentic-seeming performances matched by remarkable style which mixes stylised naturalism and sketch-like sequences. But looming over the larks is a depressing framing story - we know the plot ends up here. The unbearable tension is wondering how. The answer is heartbreaking, showing how the thatcher years brought Britain to the brink of fascism, where an underclass are either bullied or ignored to a point where the only means of expression is self-destructive violence. The 'poetic' voiceover is a mistake, especially for a director of Meadow's visual intelligence, but he'll get there. A great feature debut.