When it comes to gritty, realistic crime dramas, a genre that has many pitfalls, clichés and suffering from lack of interesting angles this film provides a somewhat fresh new approach.
Filmed in the style of a mockumentary/found footage film, this film unfolds the story of Terry(played by Nick Nevern, also directing/screenplay)and his mates, living a kind of "chav" lifestyle.
Chav is like working class youth subculture, deeply rooted in urban areas in big cities in the UK. The American equivalent would be white trash or just inner city youths drifting around, jobless, doing drugs, petty crimes etc.
Terry doesn't have job, spends his days drinking, doing drugs and occasionally beating up people that might offend him. Throughout his ordeal a filmmaker is following him around and sometimes asks questions, helps him out etc.
The biggest flaw of this film is the script, it seems like Nick Nevern hasn't really figured out how to tell this story, and thus it becomes sometimes very stale and boring.
The film also lacks a real social criticism that other UK based crime dramas like Sweet Sixteen (2002), Dead Man's Shoes (2004)etc had. Another flaw is that we never get to know Terry enough, who he is, why he acts the way he does, his background.
Bu the lack of the above, Nick Neverns makes up for in acting and directing, he and the rest of cast feels very convincing in their portrayal of bottomfeeders of UK society.
Another big flaw is from a technical standpoint, granted the film is supposed to look like a bad homevideo but sometimes I wished that Neverns had used a real camera man with a steadicam because sometimes the film gets too much motion blur and it is hard to follow what happens on the screen.
Had Neverns seen Shadows (1959), Festen/The Celebration (1998)and taken points from those films he might have avoided this. The audio is also very bad and should have been fixed.
Viewers that enjoyed Bullet Boy (2004), Sweet Sixteen (2002), and loves UK based crime drama should see Terry (2011) because despite its flaws it is worth a look and I'm looking forward to see more from Nick Nevern.
Filmed in the style of a mockumentary/found footage film, this film unfolds the story of Terry(played by Nick Nevern, also directing/screenplay)and his mates, living a kind of "chav" lifestyle.
Chav is like working class youth subculture, deeply rooted in urban areas in big cities in the UK. The American equivalent would be white trash or just inner city youths drifting around, jobless, doing drugs, petty crimes etc.
Terry doesn't have job, spends his days drinking, doing drugs and occasionally beating up people that might offend him. Throughout his ordeal a filmmaker is following him around and sometimes asks questions, helps him out etc.
The biggest flaw of this film is the script, it seems like Nick Nevern hasn't really figured out how to tell this story, and thus it becomes sometimes very stale and boring.
The film also lacks a real social criticism that other UK based crime dramas like Sweet Sixteen (2002), Dead Man's Shoes (2004)etc had. Another flaw is that we never get to know Terry enough, who he is, why he acts the way he does, his background.
Bu the lack of the above, Nick Neverns makes up for in acting and directing, he and the rest of cast feels very convincing in their portrayal of bottomfeeders of UK society.
Another big flaw is from a technical standpoint, granted the film is supposed to look like a bad homevideo but sometimes I wished that Neverns had used a real camera man with a steadicam because sometimes the film gets too much motion blur and it is hard to follow what happens on the screen.
Had Neverns seen Shadows (1959), Festen/The Celebration (1998)and taken points from those films he might have avoided this. The audio is also very bad and should have been fixed.
Viewers that enjoyed Bullet Boy (2004), Sweet Sixteen (2002), and loves UK based crime drama should see Terry (2011) because despite its flaws it is worth a look and I'm looking forward to see more from Nick Nevern.