Customer Reviews

Twentyfourseven [VHS]

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Twenty Four Seven is the kind of debut that gets hailed as promising, which is another way of saying the director clearly has talent but doesn't know what to do with it yet. Certainly compared to most of the substandard product in the UK over the past decade it's a cut above, but there's not much substance to its tale of Bob Hoskins' attempts to regain some self-respect and keep various teenagers out of trouble by starting a boxing club. For all the naturalism, there's not enough character to carry it over into tragedy when the feelgood factor takes an unexpected turn in the final third, one it sadly fails to exploit or investigate. Ironically, director Shane Meadows' subsequent film, A Room for Romeo Brass would have the opposite problem, delivering a brilliantly realized character in a thin plot before he would finally deliver the goods with Dead Man's Shoes. Very watchable and not without its incidental pleasures nonetheless, the DVD includes an amiably down to Earth commentary by Meadows and writer Paul Fraser and the original trailer.

Also included on the UK PAL DVD, 9-minute short film Three Tears for Jimmy Prophet isn't particularly memorable as a piece of filmmaking, but it's another impressive bit of corroborating evidence for the theory that Paddy Considine is the best British actor of his generation. There's nothing outstandingly original in the writing, but there's real emotional truth in his performance as a small-time boxer whose life has taken a turn for the tragic.

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, mixing stylised naturalism with sketch-like sequences (one echoing the beach games of Kitano's 'Sonatine'). But, looming over the larks is a depressing framing story - we know the plot ends up here. the unbearable tension is discovering 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 Meadows' visual eloquence, but he'll get there. A great feature debut.