A film review of the movie “Attack the block” By Asbati Bashir (Aug 19, 2012)
Movie Title: Attack the Block
Director/Writer: Joe Cornish
Genre: Science fiction /Thriller/comedy
Target Audience: 16 -35
Location: London, UK
Synopsis
“Attack the Block” is a Comedy Sci-fi movie based in Wyndham Towers Estate, South London about a gang of five young British thugs who rob an innocent woman ‘’Sam’’ (Jodie Whittaker) on her way back home from work. The gang spot Sam walking in their direction she tries to put her phone away but the gang have already seen the phone. Two of the members pedal on their bikes behind her as the other three stand in front of her. Sam checks out the situation she is in, she turns around to find the gang leader Moses (John Boyega) standing right in front of her. Without hesitation Moses quickly asks her to give up her possessions and knocks her down to the ground saying that ‘’She is too brave’’. At that moment Sam observes an object falling from the sky as do the rest of the gang. The gang run to take cover and the object crashes into a car ultimately destroying it. Sam seizes this opportunity to make a run for it, Moses simultaneously checks for any valuables in the car. He hastily climbs into the car through its broken window, rummages around and is startled by an odd white haired creature that jumps at him, he backs off out the car, tells his gang that there is something in the car. The creature jumps out of the car window and scratches Moses’ face, then it runs away. Moses feels disrespected which is fuelled by his friends as they joke about him being attacked. He decides to chase it down and kill it. On reaching the shed where the scared yet scary looking creature is hiding, Moses throws a firework into it. The creature screeches as the firework goes off and Moses runs into the shed in an attempt to kill it calling on his gang to help in killing the creature.
Confused by the events the gang come to the conclusion that the creature they killed is an alien and that the alien had landed in the wrong place, ‘’The Block.’’ Little did they know that every action has consequences and they would soon find out what they were?
The gang go to the apartment where the local drug lord ‘’Hi Hatz’’ (Jumayn Hunter) has his weed room. Moses wants to keep the alien safe as the weed room is the safest place in the Block; they don’t want it to be stolen. They ask Ron (Nick Frost) who works under ‘’Hi-Hatz’’ about using the room, Ron ushers Moses to Hi Hatz who is in the weed room. He tells Moses that the creature can stay if he agrees to sell higher grade drugs; he also reminds Moses that this is his block.
As the rest of the gang are in the living room of the flat sharing the occasional spliff they realise that there are meteor like objects falling from the sky. Excited as they think that there are more aliens like the one they had killed, the boys rush to their apartments and grab whatever they can to use as weapons to kill the intruders, including bats, swords and fireworks.
The alien in front of the gang at the nearest crash site is huge. The small white creature they killed was an equivalent to a middle sized dog; nothing compared to this gorilla sized, black alien with massive fangs and claws The gang are clearly spooked by the sight of the creature lying dead but are distracted when they see a live one in the distance. The gang take to their heels but are then chased by the police. Moses on a bicycle is caught by the police and they find the class A drugs on him. The police immediately put Moses in the back of the police truck only to find Sam sitting there; she identifies Moses as the mugger. As one of the police officers closes the door he is killed by the alien. The gang seeing this from a distance decide that they have to help Moses escape. Dennis (Franz Drameh) successfully gets Moses out of the van and tells Sam that she should go home and lock her doors. The gang are now being swarmed by more of these huge hostile aliens. ‘’Biggz’’ (Simon Howard) escapes on foot but hides in a garbage disposal where one of the aliens tries to headbutt him out and Pest’s ((Alex Esmail) leg is mauled by one of the aliens.
The gang is now reduce to four going upstairs they find out that Sam lives in the same block, gate crash her apartment and convince Sam to treat Pest’s leg, they move on to the apartment of a friend, where they are attacked by two of the aliens; Dennis is killed and Sam saves Moses by killing the same alien with a knife. A second alien was killed in the girls’ room with skating boots blade and a lamp. The aliens appear to be after Moses specifically because he had killed the smaller one earlier. The girls flee the apartment and the gang plan to avenge ‘’Dennis’’ and kill all the aliens. Moses tells Sam that she should leave the block however ‘’Hi Hatz’’ comes out of the elevator unloading his gun at the group. Sam and the gang make their way to another part of the block while one Alien pursuing them bursts through a gated door on the floor. Hi Hatz aims at the alien and misses, he jumps into the elevator to try and escape but the alien also enters it. Meanwhile ‘’Biggz’’ is still in the garbage bin phoning for back up as the alien is still waiting for him. Brewis is back in the block unaware of the events that have happened walks to the elevator and sees ‘’Hi Hatz’’ covered in blood emerge from it. Brewis and the gang are in the same elevator, the gang decide to go to Ron’s weed room. On the way Moses’s ignites two fireworks to confuse and scare the aliens, however the gang is separated in the smoke and Jerome( Leeon Jones) is killed by an alien. ‘’Hi Hatz’’ is waiting for the gang in Ron’s room, the aliens burst into the room killing ‘’Hi Hatz’’ while Ron hides in the bathroom and the gang hide in the weed room. On seeing some glowing splodges on Moses jacket when under the UV light, Brewis says that the aliens can probably smell the gang; the splodges may have come from the first alien they had killed. Meanwhile Probs and Mayhem kill the alien that surrounded Biggz using a water gun filled with a flammable liquid and a firework. They join Biggz in the garbage bin when they are startled by a police swat team. Moses decides that he will lead the aliens away from the block to so that he can blow them up. The group all check each other to see who has any of the pheromone on them. Sam is the cleanest of all of them; she goes to Moses’ apartment and turns on the gas on the cooker, secures the room, keeps the door on the latch and leaves the block. Moses courageously runs out of the apartment with the dead female alien on his back, the other aliens following him. Moses throws the female alien into the kitchen when he reaches his apartment, lights a firework into the kitchen causing an explosion. The block is now filled with people who see Moses hanging from a Union Jack flag. Moses, Pest, Brewis and Ron are all taken into custody Biggz is out of the garbage bin and starts calling Moses’s name the crowd present start cheering Moses’s name. Sam when asked tells the police that the gang were not the muggers, they were her neighbours and they had protected her. In the back of the police van Pest points out to Moses that the people cheering outside, they see him as a hero causing Moses to smile.
Analysis
The movie starts off slow and could easily give the impression it will be a typical alien invasion movie; something crash lands from outer space and takes over. However, as we get deeper into the story when the male aliens are in the block and looking for the group of youth the movie seems to get significantly darker and darker, with the deaths of Dennis, Jerome and Hi Hatz, however it is not really scary or gory.
‘’“Attack the Block” was greatly influenced by 80’s cult Sci-Fi movies. (Cornish, 2011)
It was also inspired by where Joe Cornish grew up in Stockholm, Brixton. Youth from these areas are usually portrayed negatively by the media, he tried to steer things differently by showing a positive side of inner city youth and joining together people who may not ‘’work together in life but work together in order to beat the aliens’’. He wanted the movie to be ‘’ Fun’’ which was somewhat achieved in a ‘’Make the best out of a situation’’ kind of way. ‘’ET’’,’’The Gremlins’’ ‘’Critters’’ and ‘’Tremmirs’’ were all inspirations for the story, in addition to a few gangster movies such as ‘’The Warriors’’, ‘’ Rumble Fish’’ and ‘’The outsiders’’.
Joe said that the reason he made this movie was because he wanted to ‘’Make a movie about where he was from as Hollywood would not do that’’.
The movie was very visual and the fact that the Aliens were made with minimal CGI was very impressive. Joe Cornish did that with the intention of bringing back how it would feel to have actual monsters on the sets as they did back in the 80’s. The actors actually felt more scared that they could actually see what they were running from which helped the actors in the film look a lot more authentic.
Characters:
The lead character Moses (John Boyeg), the leader of the gang comes across as the Nobel wrong doer who deep down inside has a good heart and is very brave. Moses is a the more serious member of the group we know this as he does not crack the same jokes or have the same humour as the rest of his gang members. Moses does not like being the victim in any situation whether it be him or one of his gang members this trait is noticeable in two particular scenes in the movie. One at the beginning of the movie where Moses is attacked by the female alien and chases it down to get his pay back. The second scene is after ‘’Dennis’’ (Franz Drameh) is killed in the flat where the gang had sought refuge. As the gang move to another part of the ‘’Block’’ Moses waits in the corridor that is covered in smoke to see if only one alien is approaching so that he can avenge his fallen comrade. Later it becomes apparent when Moses is speaking to Sam (Jodie Whittaker) on the phone that he’ had to grow up a lot faster than the average 15 year old because he lives with his uncle who he says ‘’Goes more than he comes.’’
The majority of the actors in the movie have grown up in the estates of South London which would account for the ‘’On point’’ representation of how youth in South London interact with friends and around others that are not from their clique. From the body language to the dialogue used in the movie seems to have a very consistent flow throughout, the mentalities or psyche of the characters represented in the movie was far from alien to the cast.
“Attack the Block” showed some positive elements of South London estate life; Joe Cornish tried to illuminate the topic of youth coming from council estates by using the words that tabloids use to describe the youth such as ‘’Monsters’’ and ‘’Savages’’ and creating a creature out of those words. In the movie you find out how young the members of the gang are and that they are still kids living for the moment, not thinking about the future. Despite the media portrayal that these kids in hoodies are fearless monsters, the movie actually shows that the gang are kids when the real monsters emerge. (Cast, 2011)
Throughout the movie we slowly begin to understand what each characters back story is and as we follow the youth through their struggle of survival and their interactions with each other, the actors seem to make the audience forget that these kids are actual gangsters that sell drugs and rob people while carrying weapons.
Later comes the reminder that although they are gangsters, the reality is that they are misled 15 year olds that are hiding behind a front who are not particularly thinking in the terms of the long run but rather the days as they come, as normal kids would.
Sam is the film’s main hint of femininity, perhaps forced by circumstances she is brave enough to care about the all-night battle for the block.
The opening scene where Sam is walking in the South London estate and the gangs names are written on the wall was a good way of letting the audience know that the character on screen is walking in a not so friendly neighbourhood. The movie did a great job with its camera angles and shot sizes making the movie feel like it was out of a comic strip. The cinematography helped enhance that feeling by tenfold.
‘’Teenage mutant Ninja Turtles’’ could well have had an influence on the creation of the characters and their relationship. Moses, the gang leader is a serious character; he does not crack the same jokes or have the same sense of humour as the rest of his gang. He does not like being the victim or for his gang members to be victimized, this trait is evident in two particular scenes. First when Moses is attacked by the female alien and he chases it down to get his pay back and after ‘’Dennis’’ is killed in the flat, Moses waits to in the corridor that is covered in smoke so that he can avenge his fallen comrade. Towards the end of the film it becomes clear that Moses’ lives with his uncle who he says ‘’Goes more than he comes’’ so Moses had to grow up a lot faster than the average 15 year old.
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The cast of this film were carefully selected, Joe Cornish did not go for the famous well know actors who have shown the world London’s urban life in previous movies such as ‘’Kidulthood’’ and ‘’Adulthood’’ but rather went for genuine South London youth actors to play these roles. The character roles were kids, the actors themselves were still teenagers the age gap between being 15 -18 who displayed a realistic representation without any of the offensive or stereotypical stigmas that come along with movies that have characters in urban areas. Jodie Whittaker and Luke Treadaway who did not know the ways of the ‘’Block’’ or the means of being accepted in such a community helped in showing the line of divide of at least two different social classes of people from London. The actors that played the youth did a phenomenal job of showing how youth from council estates have each other’s back against the world outside no matter what they were getting into even if they are scared. This is shown countless amount of times but the most memorable moment is when Hi Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) threatens to kill Moses after they crash into his car and all the boys despite being riddled with fear pull out their weapons to ‘’Moses’s defence. A great display of ‘’I am my brother’s keeper’’ if you will.
The movie’s camera angles, symbolism and theme gave the impression that it is straight out of a superhero’s comic strip, Japanese Anime or Ninja films.
At times the camera angles worked phenomenally well, giving the movie an ‘’Epic’’ feel. The camera angles (George, 2010) worked with the movie in such a way that the symbolism was that of a comic strip. Although movies have a shot list before the scenes are made ‘’“Attack the Block” appeared like a comic strip that was made into a movie. This is fascinating as ‘’“Attack the Block” was an original story.
When Moses is prepared to run out of the weed room and lead the aliens away from the gang, the ‘’Close Up’’ shot where the camera is facing Moses’s back on which he has a Samurai sword resembled a comic strip from the early versions of ‘’The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’’. The friendship between the characters, their quick witted and cheeky comments helped accentuate that feeling throughout the film. Scenes where the aliens are hiding in the shadows and the audience see that from the perspective as one of the Aliens gave the movie a great ‘’Were coming for you’’ feeling. ‘The Medium Close Up’’ scene where the gang runs across staircase on the streets and the alien’s teeth indicate that they are present was a good example of that. ‘’“Attack the Block” does a great job of manipulating camera angles and shot sizes between making the audience feel like they were with Moses and his gang, giving a feeling of being watched or that something is lurking in the background and giving us a refreshing reminder of what comic books used to look like. Joe Cornish knew exactly who he wanted the movie to appeal to and what he needed to do to make it with effective.
The movie did pay considerable attention to the humour and the setting. Whenever things get too tense, there’s a Brewis (Luke Treadaway) scene to lighten the atmosphere. (Brewis is a rich kid who went to buy weed for a party at the wrong time.) The quick witted one word comments typical of youngsters were perfectly timed. For example when the gang kill their first male alien and comment its deep black fur, Dennis mentions that the creature is ‘’Blacker than my cousin Peshi’’. Comments as such have been thrown all over the movie, adding humour and reality to remind the audience that these are still kids although they are fighting for their lives.
The Music
The music used a very interesting mixing two different ideas into one movie may be considered very risky especially when trying to please two different kinds of audiences. ‘Attack the Block’ had to have a council estate audience appeal yet still have that sic-fi feel. The music in the film was very well planned and the idea of mixing Sci-fi sounds with the very signature urbane sound of British grime (a more fast paced and electronic version of American Hip-Hop) worked well since grime music uses similar sounds to that of Sci- Fi music; Reverbed snares, electronic sounds, the use of synthesisers and echoed elements are all apart of grime and those same elements are used in Sci-fi films. The background soundtrack also worked well with the camera angles when there were fast paced movements. Since music and heart rate are both measured in beats per minute the film tries to get the viewer to be connected with the characters, the music increases the feeling of tension and the anxious feeling when the heart is racing. It is true to say that the significance of music in the movie is such that its’ absence would leave the audience feeling frustrated and disconnected from the film and characters (Dickinson, 2003) Not saying that the audience will feel like they want to run out of their seats but they would agree that if they were in the place of the actors, the soundtrack is relevant to the moments that the gang are in. The movie had a great method of merging two different worlds into one as demonstrated by the music, the setting and the characters.
The Conclusion
After seeing the movie it is evident that some parts of the movie moved on particularly quickly, especially in the scene where the first member of the gang is killed by the alien. Being such a small and tight gang, a slower paced and more emotional scene may have suited the moment that one of their members was killed. The scene seemed a bit rushed.
Cornish managed to show the anger felt by these socially-challenged, youth. Moses was characterized as full of bravado a leader who acts and feels like he is supposed to. Yet, once Moses is disarmed by the terror of the alien, Sam and the audience see him as a regular kid who is honest, decent and sincere.
There’s more to the gang than violence, but Sam is not obliged to forgive them just because they had their issues. What Moses, Pest, Biggz, Dennis, and Jerome did was wrong and Attack the Block never indicates otherwise. It does however acknowledge that the gang can do good things and bad things. These Muggers can care about and protect their home.
He sought the opinion of youth that he interviewed on the streets of south London regarding what types of weapons they would use in order to combat an alien invasion. This played a major role within the movie because other than the typical cliché ‘’Guns in the Hood’’ that most urban movies seem to stereotypically fall into. The movie showed and represented the creativity that urban youth have, this was clear when two characters ‘’Probs’’ and ‘’Mayhem’’ us a water pistol filled with a flammable liquid and a firework in order to kill one of the aliens. This makes the movie seem a lot more realistic because access to real fire arms would make the gang of youth in the movie a lot more violent and it would make the audience lose the sense that they are just bored kids.
The movie shed a positive light for the youth that come from these kind of estates and shows that their are always diamonds in the dirt. The movie showed a great sense of teamwork friendship and also a road to redemption and a road from young teenagers growing up and taking responsibility for their actions. Without a doubt if a movie with a refreshing story line, very charismatic actors set in a well paced manner that doesn’t comfort to the typical stigmas of Hollywood. A movie that can make us forget about the monsters we are told and actually see their road to redemption by taking responsibility by protecting where their from,from the real monsters. Then ‘’Attack the Block’’ is definitely the movie to see.
After watching this movie you will realise that we learn two things from this movie:
1.Actions have consequences
2.That if we look deeper into things, their is always good in them!
Bibliography
Cast, A. t. B., 2011. Part 3 [Interview] (6 May 2011).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHLMMTZLtdM&feature=relmfu Cornish, J., 2011. (accessed 16 Aug 2012)
Attack The Block” Writer-Director Joe Cornish Talks Shadow Aliens, English Thugs, And Project Slang [Interview] (29 July 2011).
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2011/07/interview-joe-cornish-attack-the-block (accessed 16 Aug 2012)
Dickinson, K., 2003. Movie Music, The Film Reader. London: Routledge.
George, N., 2010. Film Crew: Fundamentals of Professional Film and Video Production. Las Vegas: Platinum Eagle Publishing.
