The writer of this film also wrote a couple of other cult british horror comedies, Cockneys Vs Zombies and Severance. His name is James Moran, that's all I really know. His name and two films he's also written the screenplay to.
I liked Severance I guess, though I can't really enjoy Danny Dyer in any way whatsoever, but he is ignorable if you try hard enough. Tower Block was released in 2012 and got a decent enough nation wide cinema release, though it was only on for a couple of weeks. It looked decent enough but there was too much to see at that point so I waited for the DVD release instead. Well, months on and one BluRay purchase later and I sat down on my couch, coffee in hand, to watch this small budgeted British thriller. Here are my modest thoughts.
The movie begins with a look at the various characters that exist in a pending-destruction tower block in East London. It also shows a young man being beaten to death by two masked thugs. The police try to get some information from the people in the tower block about the attack that happened in the halls of their residence. None of them would speak. None of them had any information, and so the thugs went free and the residents carried on with their lives, in a run-down block of flats where only the top floor is lived in. The remainder of the block has been emptied and re-homed. So, thats where the tale begins.
Sheridan Smith is the headliner in the movie. Fans of UK sitcoms like The Royle Family, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Gavin & Stacey will know her well. She plays a character called Becky who saw the attack on the boy happen and attempted to save him, but she was beaten up too and didnt have an information for the police. She is the "good" person in the mix, and the film tends to focus on here mostly, which is a good idea because she is likeable and familiar with no real reason to dislike her.
I dont know any of the other performers in the film, except for a guy from Gavin & Stacey who plays an alcoholic loner named Paul. The other main character is called Kurtis, a thug-wannabe Derby-voiced drug dealer who has spent years theratening the people of the block and making them pay him money with a promise that if they do he wont attack them and wreck their homes. Nice. So we are introduced to this extremely annoying chap early on. His performance as the skinny little prick chav is well done but the type is done so often in british films that it's getting old and annoying now. I understand that people like this exist, sadly, but it seems that alot of urban films based in Britain have this chracter in them. I know people like this exist, especially in the more downtrodden areas of the country, but it is so typical and over-the-top that it seems too obvious now. Am I supposed to eventually like these one-dimensional nasty characters? Really? I don't.
So, months later and the residents of the top floor of the block are going about their lives as usual. An older couple living normally, a couple of little thuggy lads pretending to be "gangsta", a single mother who yells at her kids constantly, a family with a son who plays Battlefield 3, alot. And so on.
Suddenly, as the people are in their flats going about their lives, bullets fly through their windows and kill certain people. We see a sniper rifle reloading and aimed at the tower block. The residents all run into the halls, freaking out. They're being picked off and they don't know why.
I'll stop there. Thats where the story begins and I wont spoil it. It tells the story of a group of people trying to escape from a sniper aimed at their tower block who has set traps around the building. It's about the way the characters interact as well as why they are being terrorised in such a manner.
It's a fun premise and the performances are mostly good. Some are passable but none are actually bad, which I didn't expect. I found the character of Kurtis to be too irritating and obnoxious to tolerate and at times it made me grit my teeth. It was a little too much at times. I enjoyed the film, basically and honestly, it was fun and didn't drag during it's 90+ minutes. My main issue is that there are gaping inconsistancies and plot holes the size of a stella artois factory. It is in these issues that the film let me down. They were obvious plot holes that I cannot fathom how someone could miss. I wonder if the director was even that bothered towards the end. It is one of those films that gives too much away too soon and ends in a very unsatisfying way. Still, the actors did a good job with the mediocre script, the story, or 50% of it, was interesting and at times tense and it was a decent urban brit-thriller of which the country doesn't produce many.
I would recommend it to anyone who might like the idea of survival thrillers but the chracter models are dated and the story falls short on many occassions. Still, not all bad and worth a watch.
SCORE - 5 pints of cider out of 10.
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