iLL Manors review

iLL Manors review

'There's no such thing as broken Britain/We're just bloody broke in Britain.' This line from the lead single of the film sharing the same name, 'ill Manors', goes to speaks volumes on modern British society but also in turn set the overall scene of the film as belonging in the genre of social realism. Located in, as Empire Online refers to it, the 'poverty-stricken estates of East London' the film appears to be gritty, unapologetic and blunt in its nature throughout its entirety and one of the way it does this in quite a more notable way is through its soundtrack.

Made by Plan B himself, the album chronicles the events of the film with tracks like 'Playing With Fire' describing the narrative of Jake with lines such as 'He's kid, off the estates/They call him little Jake/Today he tried to buy weed with his little mate/Up in the bits, but he's just a kid' and 'Deepest Shame.' What's actually interesting is the way these songs play during their corresponding scenes (e.g. 'Playing With Fire' in the Jake sequence) in the film as a way of accompanying the visuals of the film and further get the audience to the point where they understand aspects of the character or what they're going through, that they might not have had at all if the songs weren't there.

The plot of the film generally bases itself around 'the lives of four drug dealers, one user and two prostitutes.' Delving into the lives of these 7 characters and arguably more, the audience is taken on a ride with them as they do what they have to do to ensure their very lives. With this what's quite admirable is the use of a multi-strand narrative where we follow each of these characters individually with their stories at certain points in the whole narrative interlinking e.g. Aaron and the Katya, the 'runaway,' coming together because of the baby she abandons on the train. While this could've been overwhelming for viewers, I feel that it was done in such a way that they could understand all that was going on in the film without fail. It can be said though that especially during the second half of the film, a lot of the momentum that carried the first along was gone as each of the storylines went on. However what truly brings this plot together are the characters within it and the actors that play them.

Being a reasonably low budget film, the film has actors that are relatively unknown to the average viewer and also debut ones to add to that. But while this could be seen as being a potential pitfall for the film, rather it helps it deliver a greater level of overall authenticity. The best example of this is evident with the portrayal of Chris by Lee Allen, who has actually dealt with aspects explored by the film with him not only having a tough upbringing as a child but also actually going to prison for drug-related offences in 2004. With this, the role he asked to play by Drew was all-too-familiar for him and so making sure that the aura of the character was conveyed correctly was essentially not a problem at all and this is something that I felt throughout the entirety of the film. From a more general standpoint though, the acting was good enough to the point where it essentially reflected the environment of the characters with the predominant use of slang coupled with frequent curse words.

While the audience of the production is clear though, the same can't be said about the restrictions for it. The film appears to target 15 to 25-year olds with its usage of reasonably young people and language normally associated with the demographic - slang. At the same time though, while it can be said to target this group, whether that was intended by Plan B or not is questionable with the film having an age rating of 18. The film does have elements that go towards making a film 18-rated such as strong violence being shown, sexual scenes and strong language, however the fact that Plan B would still go ahead with the release of the film without a lower rating being a possibility is rather odd. Perhaps having no sexual scenes and only allusions to them could've done this as well as a toning down of the violence, but either way Drew didn't decide to change this. It could be said that this was due to him wanting to really achieve the 'real' aspect of the social realism genre but regardless, this rating could have acted as a barrier from letting certain people actually watch the film. Either way though, I would recommend this film to someone around my age as I think they'd be capable of processing the upfront nature of the film as somewhat of a necessary evil. 

Overall though, I can say that iLL Manors was quite a good film. Being upfront and gritty about ongoings in London in terms of things like crime and life in general and having actors that were actually 'true to what they were portraying,' it can be said that Drew achieved what he set out to do even though the film did 'run out of steam' at some points. However while the production was generally good, there are aspects of the film that can be questioned. The first one is whether the 18 rating limited the target audience Plan B wanted to aim the film at from watching it. The second though, and perhaps more importantly, is whether the film further cements the whole ideology that the youth of London live 'under a criminal cloak.' Throughout the film, there's essentially no real aspiration of any character to really get out of the mess that they inhabit and rather the cycle just continues to go on and on.  It's questionable in that case then, whether people from say more middle-class backgrounds will take to 'iLL Manors' as being more of a reasoning behind why some of the youth do the criminal acts they do to get by or just a convoluted excuse for it all and continue to view them in the same regard that they do - menaces to society.