While there is no shortage of British films whose attempts at a gritty crime milieu crumble under the weight of mockney cliché and over-the-top bloodbaths, the best depictions of crime are to be found amid films with wider, social realist ambitions. Ken Loach's My Name is Joe and Sweet Sixteen are good examples of this: Loach is not interested in making thrillers per se, yet in being true to the experiences of a certain Glaswegian underclass, violence and venality inevitably come into the equation of his films.
Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams makes his auspicious feature debut with a similar synthesis of compassionate realism and dramatic tension. A divergence from Loach, perhaps, is the extent to which Williams' film will have you on the edge of your seats.
The film opens with adrenalin already racing, as twentysomething prostitute Kelly deposits panic-stricken 11-year-old Joanne in a public lavatory; leaving her there while she performs the tricks – pulverized eye notwithstanding – needed to fund a dawn train out of London. As they escape to Brighton, Kelly's odious pimp gets a call from a gangland boss, who knows the reason behind their flight (best left to be discovered), and wants to exact his revenge.
What follows is lean, and terribly mean; and if only more conventional thrillers were as direct. What makes it particularly powerful is that we believe the world on screen – one populated by prostitutes, pimps and vagrants, bottom feeders whose lives are soaked in desperation. Lorraine Stanley gives an astonishingly real performance as a prostitute far removed from the glamorous male wet dream of Mona Lisa: there's something horridly hilarious in her knowledge that however bruised and filthy she is, a man will always pay her for sex.
In comparison, the men here are painted with a broader brush, sometimes falling into caricature, but this is a minor criticism. Williams shoots with economy and a welcome lack of flash; for once, a jittery camera reflects anxiety on screen, rather than the director's nervous tic. The motor of the film is our concern for Joanne and Kelly. The fact that a grim fate for them is entirely plausible makes that sympathy painfully felt.
One of the most acclaimed British films of recent years, London to Brighton is an uncompromisingly robust edge of your seat thriller that has picked up a raft of awards and nominations. It's 3 am and two girls burst into a run-down toilet. Joanne is crying her eyes out and her clothing is ripped. Kelly's face is bruised and starting to swell. Duncan Allen lies in his bathroom bleeding to death. Duncan's son, Stuart, has found his father and wants answers. Derek, Kelly's pimp, needs to find Kelly or it will be him who pays. Kelly and Joanne just need to get through the next 24 hours alive.
Red Road
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London to Brighton
