Attack the Block (2011)

On October 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Film Review

Pictured: Your heroes

Director Joe Cornish

Stars John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Nick Frost

Things You Might Like

Aliens invading South London
Excellent acting by a group of kids
An impressive CGI beastie experience
The soundtrack

Things You Might Not Like

The dialect
Wirty dords. So many wirty dords

Conclusion
Attack the Block provides a fun, intense alien invasion movie in an unconventional setting with some great actors.

4 out of 5 Roman Candles

Aaron Simon

***

Before we begin, I’d like to define a very important term for American readers. A “chav” is a fellow who speaks like this:

They’re similar to those kids who really wanted to be members of the Crips or Bloods in middle and high school—I had a few of them in some of my classes and, oddly enough, they were all in JROTC—but lacked enough cognitive faculties to realize that those particular gangs would a) shoot them or b) weren’t in the area.

Chavs, like any true species, vary wildly from breed to breed. In Canterbury, for example, they were limited to harassing people for French fries from kebab containers. In London, though, they’re the sort of people who burned down a furniture store to protest the killing of a drug dealer.

So you might be of the opinion that these chavs aren’t particularly liked in English culture, and you’d be correct.

Thus, it’s pretty bloody awesome that Joe Cornish’s 2011 sci-fi release, Attack The Block, featured chavs as protagonists.

Now, granted, these chavs are of the young sort. Specifically, the under-16 variety. However, that doesn’t make them any less violent than their older counterparts, like Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter), a completely insane rapper/marijuana-dealer. In fact, the film opens with the group, led by up-and-coming gangsta Moses (Jon Boyega), mugging a woman at night.

So, soon after the film begins, we realize that our protagonists aren’t the most-upstanding citizens in South London. This, not surprisingly, doesn’t really change over the course of the movie. They remain the heroes, but when the choice is between a bunch of kids and a horde of slavering, murderous beasts with neon-blue fangs, it’s obvious who we’re going to root for.

So, right, back to the plot: After Moses and the gang mug Sam (Jodie Whittaker), they start walking back to their council-funded apartment building (definition of terms: “council-funded” is analogous to “the projects”) only to be stopped dead in their tracks as an alien in a… er, something, plummets from the sky and crashes into a nearby parked car.

The gang investigates and Moses is attacked by the beast. Displaying the jib that makes underprivileged youth so renown, they rush after the fleeing alien and beat it to death in a playground.

They bring the corpse to stoned-out proxy for Hi-Hatz, Ron (Nick Frost). After hanging around the apartment, discussing what they’re going to do with the fame coming from discovering a new species (believe it, bruv), they look out and notice that—shock, awe—more aliens are crashing around South London.

Realizing that the police won’t give a damn about the block, the gang takes it on themselves to go out and take the fight to the invaders. Of course, these new aliens are much tougher than the one they killed: bear-sized beasts that are utterly pitch black (“Blacker than my cuz”), have glowing teeth, and can scale walls.

After meeting one of the new aliens, they realize that they’ve bitten off more they can chew, and must fight to survive the invasion–and fight to survive the wrath of a paranoid drug dealer.

(NOTE! I should mention the whole economic/sociological factor in here. The notion of class pops up a few times in the movie, but it’s not enough to really distract the viewer from the fact that there are blind, murderous aliens running around the neighborhood. Instead, we’re given it as a way to make these characters human. The kids are in this position because of either the choices their parents have made, or because of the economically-depressed neighborhood surrounding them, and, as such, they act one way and not another. But, once again, it’s not enough to beat you over the head with it.)

In the words of one of the gang members, Jerome: This is too much madness to fit into one text!

So, the out-and-out awesomeness of the actors has to be mentioned. It helps that, aside from Frost and Whittaker, there aren’t any names that Yanks like me would know, for sure. But you have to realize something: Actors in this age range usually suck hard. Not so here, my friends. The acting is awesome and really, really gets you into the area and mentality.

Effects-wise, Cornish made a very, very wise choice in making the aliens the way they were. I’m willing to bet that having a bunch of utterly black hulks with only teeth as features saved a ton in CGI costs, and it frankly did the film a lot of good in making them seem more alien than they otherwise would have.

So, you can obviously tell I liked this movie, right?

Part of that is surely because I’ve got such a fixation on England as a whole, and part of that is also because I’m such a sci-fi fan. But then it’s also because it’s a legitimately good movie—one that was worth the price of a ticket. (Which is, basically, how I judge a movie now.)

So, there’s not a whole lot else I can say that wouldn’t be reiterating my “Good acting! Good writing!” chant I had going on above. I recommend it to people who like a good bit of comedy with their alien invasions, and anyone who’d like to know a bit more about those people who were running around London burning shit in the summer.