Attack the Block Review

Attack the Block feels something like the culmination of a new wave of British filmmaking, if you’ll forgive such grandiose showboating. With the mainstream successes of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in recent years, followed by films by Garth Jennings, Ricky Gervais, Chris Morris and more recently Richard Ayoade, it seems clearer than ever that British television comedy is a particularly fertile breeding ground for quality filmmaking. The latest example of this is Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block. Cornish, who made his name with Adam Buxton on their cult TV and now radio programme, The Adam and Joe Show, presents a slick urban-comedy-sci-fi-horror-action flick that in one fell swoop proves the first-time feature director as an assured talent and a definite ‘one to watch’ for coming years.

Set in and around a tower block in South East London (a location not too far removed from where this review is being written), the film follows the exploits of Moses (Boyega) and his gang of hoodies, who, while in the act of mugging Sam (Whittaker), a nurse who lives in their building, encounter a vicious alien creature that crash lands on earth. Taking it upon themselves to kick the bejesus out of the vaguely ape-like creature, Moses’s gang soon find themselves under siege from the alien’s much bigger, more dangerous brethren.

The film is successful on a number of levels. The ensemble cast – fleshed out by Nick Frost’s drug dealer and Luke Treadaway’s posho pothead – all give sound performances and there are no notable weak links in the company. Cornish’s vibrant, kinetic direction gives the film a slick (but not too slick), look; using a selection of crafty shots, interesting angles and elegant lighting, drab buildings and streets are transformed into credible and exciting action movie locales. The basic concept too, while simple, is executed in a classy manner. There’s substance to accommodate the style too – whilst the film is not exactly going to be bothering Ken Loach any time soon, there is a small but healthy dose of social commentary to cast your mind over between eviscerations.

It’s difficult to fault the film itself – perhaps there are fewer laughs to be had than one might expect of a comedian of Cornish’s calibre and the film is at times a semi-serious affair; though it is in some ways a relief that he is willing to put a foot outside the comedy comfort zone. What did annoy a little bit was the amount of laughter generated by the dialect of the characters. Whilst the language and slang used by Moses’s gang is colourful, it is also genuinely representative of how a great deal of teens in South London speak and for that to arouse so much humour in the predominantly white, middle-class audience smacked a little of snobbery on the viewer’s part, though I am somewhat loath to suggest this is indeed the case. As noted above, the film itself could hardly be accused of such prejudices – whilst Moses’s gang aren’t exactly the most loveable bunch of kids you’d ever meet, stereotypes of the young, poor and disenfranchised are both challenged and played with in the film, to amusing and interesting effect.

It would also be amiss not to flag up the quality of the creature’s design. Pitch black, furry and adorned with neon blue teeth, they are both frightening and very cool. Like the film itself, as previously mentioned, simple, but classy. Attack the Block is an assured, enthusing and highly competent first film. With regard to its director, it provokes the excited reaction of ‘that was great – what’s next!?’