I don’t know about you, but I’m a moral law abiding citizen (sadly not the Gerard Butler type), and don’t have any intention to commit crimes to enhance my budding “street rep”; putting me at odds with the new, gritty, young adult representative film Offender. Needless to say, I do not get on with this movie.
Tommy Nix (Joe Cole, Skins) is going to prison, a young offender’s institute to be precise, because he wants revenge!
Set against the backdrop of last year’s London riots, this working-class builder goes nuts after his pregnant girlfriend (Kimberly Nixon, Fresh Meat) gets on the wrong end of three ‘gangsta’ lads on probation. The three get chucked back into offenders, so Tommy beats up a couple police officers to get thrown in with them, and it turns into an whodunit in the institute, with Tommy working his way through various other offenders and wardens to get his ultimate revenge.
I’ve seen a lot of people rave about Cole in this movie, and I’m struggling to see why. He looks like a working class chav, but is he meant to be? He appears and acts mentally unbalanced quite well in places, which must only be done to liven a bland and dull performance. His girlfriend Elise is not made memorable by Nixon either in such a putrid, melodramatic role. The two main antagonists, Jake (English Frank) and Mason (Tyson Oba), were more memorable, but not because of their performances; because they were over-colourful roles, that were hard to forget; English Frank is the whitest, built, brick of a man I’ve ever seen (he walks around the film pretty much topless which is made more ridiculous by a constant pout), and Mason also stands out as a giant black lad with dreadlocks becoming a muslim. But don’t worry, this is only a precursor to the lunacy within…
First off the bat, the movie loses all credibility by having a young offenders prison half filled with people clearly over 21; in fact fact the two main bad guys (Jake and Mason) are easily 30! If you want to convince me that this is a gritty take about young adults, then use them, not balding brick-shithouses, or chaps who attempt to cover up their wrinkles with dreadlocks. Oh, I get it… they’re “street” with a bit of common sense. Well wag wum breddin’, let’s go stabbin’ ya ting!
The amount of underground rappers is quite distracting; I mean one of Jake’s henchmen, Angelface, is named G FrSh in real life (Yes, G FrSh. Bet he makes his mum call him that; the a sad fucker of a man); and I hate, and I mean hate, the constant raps/rap battles here; they’re quite distracting when the focus of the film is meant to be a revenge plot. But I love the fact that all these underground rappers are showing off their skills with lyrics about dissin’ the man, yet appearing in a film like this solely to get noticed by the man; the one with a recording contract; Pot. Kettle. Black.
As a representation of youth or chav culture today, it’s a piss-poor take. Undoubtedly London is how it’s represented here; a haven for young, rap influenced, down on their luck, young men and women, and admittedly it’s quite a good (and quick) view of last year’s London riots, but not everyone in that city was effected by it. The east-end (where this film’s based) has been a haven for crime for years because of how rough it is, so adding the youth culture here tries to make an evolution of the area, but just glorifies an unwanted ideal; your life must be as bad as this so you can become a sexy character like Jake or one of the rappers in this film.
I mean, is this really what they do in young offenders all day? Are they encouraged to be ghetto and street, instead of learning moral, family, and social values in an attempt to rebuild their lives? Jake rants about being beaten up by his mum’s boyfriend, his poor childhood, blah blah blah. OK, it sounds like a bad childhood, but there are facilities to rebuild your life in prison to prove those people wrong. It’s not a good view of the prison system in the UK, and glorifies this shit lifestyle choice, which is a terrible move. I don’t want to press my politics onto a neutral review, but this movie is being bigged up as a realistic view, and, as a taxpayer, I hate the fact my taxes are going to support these cocks, who’re dicking about all day, doing sod all but rapping.
Characterisation is also not Offender’s forte; Tommy is a bloody pointless character, and as good revenge stories go, he does have a reasonable amount of motivation after seeing his life destroyed (to a point), but after he’s accomplished that he’s stuck in a situation where there’s nowhere for him to go, and no future whatsoever. Needless to say, it’s a bit meaningless. Okay, you got your revenge – now what? He’s not got his girlfriend or his baby back. He’s earned the respect of the prison inmates, but that isn’t what he wanted from life, so there’s no logic to it.
Actually, he’s not the worst character in this movie (which is saying something); his girlfriend Elise, after her vicious and graphic beating, has something utterly terrible happen to her, but after that she can’t speak to Tommy anymore (preferring to deal with her emotions on her own), before she leaves him stating “there’s nothing left to say.” Ummm… what? It’s the most completely ridiculous reaction I have ever seen at the cinema. I’m not doubting what happened to Elise is horrific, but why does she feel she has to leave Tommy? What happened wasn’t his fault at all. The only valid reason is Tommy couldn’t be there for her, but that would be a stupid reason to dump him… I personally thought that she was heartless, walking out on Tommy like that; and she’s supposed to be the most sympathetic character in the film!
Come to think of it, she gets attacked at a probation office; somewhere there must be a reasonable amount of security (I mean you’re not going to rely on secretaries to handle young lads and ladies who steal and attack other people are you?), so where were they? and why couldn’t they walk her back to her car? It doesn’t make much sense to me.
More stupid characters arrive in Nash, the head prison warden; played by Shaun Dooley, his performance as the officer whose in with a few of the mafia type cons was enjoyable, but for all the wrong reasons; he’s in with the bigger cons why? Because Britain “has failed him”. After nicking a pair of trainers from an inmate he launches into a child like rant about how rubbish his life is, and how Britain has failed him, how the rioters had the right idea, how they’ve got more rights than him, blah blah blah. It’s very GCSE sociology stuff, and it’s amazing how we’re also meant to take this man seriously after earlier in the film he smokes weed and dances around semi-naked to garage, drum and bass, or whatever passes for music nowadays. Nash is not sympathetic, just sad, and does not give any impact with the message he’s meant to deliver.
The plot, whilst simplistic, is also way too reminiscent of the first Mad Max movie; take away Australia, the end of the world, and British young people’s prison settings, and they are essentially the same plot; except Max has a reason to keep going compared to “poor” Tommy. True, sympathetic male-lead, revenge stories are commonplace, but comparing Max and Tommy is very apt when you consider they’re two normal people thrown into extraordinary conditions. Max is a far superior character to Tommy, and when Max’s family dies it happens off screen (leaving the violence to the audience’s imagination) whilst Elise’s brutal attack was a tad melodramatic, especially with what happens to her later on.
What’s worse is there’s actually some good violence here; it looks very realistic compared to other bigger budget films released this summer; barring some dodgy Bourne Identity-esque camerawork, the fight scenes are shot well, and capture the raw brutality of man-to-man brawls in prison (it’s one of the few times the level of violence is justified to get the point across). Also, credit is due to the make-up team and production staff for showing off the fantastic blood, bruising, cuts, and other facial injuries; they’re ridiculously good, and thoroughly impressive amongst the constant dirge of awfulness.
In a grim and horrible way, what happens to Elise is also a weirdly good scene; using slow reaction cuts and fade outs to skip time, it ends up being a really good horror scene by making the viewer so uncomfortable, it stood out and is easily the highlight of the film. If it wasn’t for these glimmers of hope, this review would be getting less, as you could have condensed Offender down into a 3 minute music video for one of the music artists on the cast and it would have worked so much better, instead of the plodding around shit we have to sit through for over 100 minutes.
Needless to say, Offender ended up offending me in the end. What’s meant to be some pseudo-social commentary ends up glorifying a horrific lifestyle, and making this sick chav culture look almost cool. Some reasonable points, enforced by actual good violence, get washed away by stupidity, shit characters, and too many over the top non-actors fighting for screentime. If you do happen to see this failure of a film I hope you have the same reaction I did – “Offend-URGH!”
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
