Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

allyatherton A teenager from the wrong side of the tracks tries to build a new lifeStarring Martin Compston and William Ruane Screenplay by Paul Laverty Directed by Ken LoachThis is a gritty drama with plenty of colourful language from the get go.It's not a fun movie, it's not exactly a laugh a minute. It's dark, it's real, it's disturbing. It's a bit like a lower budget, made for TV, council estate version of Trainspotting. The acting is pretty decent and I liked all the location filming. The plot is okay, it kept my interest but it's not overly exciting. It's a short movie and probably long enough. But I really struggled with the Scottish accents. And I couldn't get the subtitles working on my TV!Gritty. 7/10

jc-osms Greenock is just down the road from where I live, in fact there's rivalry bordering on enmity between the town where I work, Paisley and Greenock, where this super-realistic Ken Loach film was made. I can therefore completely identify from first-hand observation, although rarely, thankfully from experience, the young, foul mouthed, ill-mannered, drug-dependant, "neds" (non-educated delinquents), who largely populate the film. In fact, in their tracksuit and trainers garb, they still roam the streets today, usually in a zombie-like, drug-hazed trance.The central character of the film, young Liam and his best-mate Pinball obviously don't go to school and out on the streets, work the margins, both small-time partners, roaming the local pubs selling cigarettes on the fly. Liam's mum is in prison, presumably on drugs-related charges and is due for release soon, but she's in tow with a hardened, petty criminal boy-friend who Liam hates, while also in the family mix is Liam's older sister, a single parent with a young child, who doesn't get on with their mum and bizarrely, a grandfather who's into the same petty crime as the mother's boyfriend. A chance discovery of the boyfriend's drug-stash gives the soon-to-be-sixteen year-old a golden chance to make big money quickly and buy a dream caravan for the family to make a literally clean start but instead leads him into a shady underworld of crime and violence.Everyone lets Liam down in the film, eventually himself too and at the end, we see him in the time-honoured teenage mixed-up confusion traceable all the way back to Mod Jimmy in "Quadrophenia" and of course the original cause-less rebel of James Dean. The language and violence in the film are extreme but trust me, true to life and the little snippets of humour get steadily darker as the film progresses. Liam's progress from early-on comically getting a reversing truck to run over a policeman's motorbike in a gag used before by Woody Allen to the "sting" he falls victim to when required to stab a man to death in an underworld initiation test shows how far he comes / falls in his journey into darkness.Filmed in real locations certainly familiar to me and without his sometime trait of attendant sentimentality, I think this is one of the best Ken Loach films I've seen. The acting by the exclusively Scottish and often first-time actors is mostly convincing, with Compston in particular showing the talent that has deservedly kept him in work ever since, although usually in rather typecast strong, silent parts in movies and on TV. This was a believable, gritty warts-and-all slice of life of a random teenager's nowhere existence in the grey, economic wasteland of latter day West of Scotland. It's grim up north, believe me.

nefelidimo An awful, depressing movie about a 15 year old kid. He has a mother in jail, a stepfather and grandfather who beat him and call him a c***, a*******, and d******* among other things. The kid (Liam), decides to get his mother a caravan (trailer home) as a surprise when she gets out of jail for an unknown crime. In order to get the money, he sells cocaine with his "best friend". However, his revengeful friend burns down the caravan after Liam becomes a pawn to a powerful drug lord. I stopped watching at the part when Liam's "best friend" begins to commit suicide because Liam isn't "man enough" to murder him. All the characters spoke in a Scottish accent, because that was where the movie was set. The accent didn't bother me, however, trying to decipher what was going on with all the "f****** c****!" in the dialogue was torture if you didn't have subtitles. I heard more cuss words in that movie than I have in my entire life.Don't waste your time. It's depressing and one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.

eilidh206 i don't think this film should be an 18 - i was only sixteen when i saw it, the main actor was only 15/16 when it was made, along with most of the main characters. So technically they weren't allowed to watch the film they had made! There is nothing in this film that is going to offend anyone, 16 year olds can watch a lot worse than this! There is a lot of swearing in it but what teenagers don't swear?! i think its a brilliant film and should be available for people that are the age of the character 'Liam' to see! i enjoyed the film when i was only sixteen and there was nothing in it that i didn't understand or that offended me!