BULLET BOY(Saul Dibb, UK, 2004, 89 minutes)
Most major cities contain one neighborhood that's worse than all the rest. In Detroit, it's Eminem’s Eight Mile. In London, it's Lower Clapton Road, AKA Murder Mile, where Saul Dibb's gritty feature debut takes place.
The same day 19-year-old Ricky (Ashley "Asher D" Walters, Britain's notorious So Solid Crew) exits juvie, he scuffles with some Hackney rude boys over a broken rearview mirror. As the situation escalates, a gun enters the scene and the foreshadowing kicks into overdrive.
Will Ricky whack someone...or will he get whacked? Or will impressionable 12-year-old brother Curtis (charismatic newcomer Luke Fraser) end up paying for his crimes? One thing is for certain: a rival's pit bull won't make it out of this feud alive.
Marketed as a British Boyz N the Hood, the friendship between trying-to-go-straight Ricky and volatile "bruv" Wisdom (Leon Black) makes it more like an Anglo-Carribean cousin to Mean Streets. The performances, mostly non-pro, feel just as authentic and the East London slang lends verisimilitude--and, yes, a little inscrutability.
Featuring an ominous score from Neil Davidge and Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, Bullet Boy plays like a horror film with the street--rather than any of the characters--as monster.
Endnote: As featured in the December issue of Resonance (R.I.P.).
Image (Ashley Walters and Luke Fraser) from the Bullet Boy website.
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