Neds

Dir: Peter Mullan

Year: 2010

Cast: Conor McCarron, Peter Mullan, Gary Lewis

Genre: Drama

Cert: 18

Rating: ★★★

IMDb

Neds is the story of a boy named John McGill who lives in Scotland and comes from a broken home. His mother and aunt are always supportive but his alcoholic father is violently abuse towards him and his mother. His older brother, Benny is a local and feared gang member, who is violent with anyone who steps in his way whereas John is a civilized brain box who is very quiet and wants nothing in the way of trouble. But after falling in with the wrong crowd, Wee T, Sparra, Tam, Key Man and Gerr, a few years later in Secondary school, he's now where Benny is, a local feared lunatic who is fearless and more violent than anyone. This causes trouble for him at home, in school and just in general outside of both. He comes to a point where he must decide if he wants to continue a life of violence or pick up where he left off as an intelligent A student and work towards a better future.

I thought this was yet another brilliant film from Scottish director Peter Mullan, In such a short time I managed to become a massive fan of his and he proves as a serious inspiration as a film maker with his movie realism. Even though this film has a few odd bits that might take away from the realism, i.e. A statue of Jesus coming to life and fighting John during a glue-sniffing trip. It's a bit odd but through all the realism in his films he likes to put in odd short scenes of madness. A large percentage of the time it's believable though. The characters in this film were all brilliant and believable, personally I find British and Scottish drama's more believable than American ones. They seem far more realistic, when I watch an American drama I would say that there's brilliant acting in it, but with British and Scottish drama's, they feel as real as anything. Looking at the characters in this you would probably see most of these walking around where you're from because of how genuine they seem. It's set in the 70's so stylistically they'll be different of course. Peter Mullan plays John's aggressive alcoholic father who steals some of the scenes, even without talking or having his face in shot. The actor who plays the older version of John, Conor McCarron was disturbingly similar to Ray Winstone as Carlin from Scum. You would swear it was his son. There's moments in the film where I literally didn't believe it was anyone else and just WAS Ray Winstone. In a sense that made it better because Ray Winstone is one of my favourite actors and to see him practically channeled through McCarron made his performance all the more better. It's rare a movie can ever shock me or make me cringe or drop my jaw, but there's a particular scene in this in a graveyard that made my jaw fucking shatter off the floor. When a movie can do that to me you know it's worth looking at really. My main concern with the film was the ending. It was a bizarre one and a bit odd like I mentioned earlier but it took a bit to grow on you and understand what the point of it was, if you're familiar with the Scottish Ned culture of the 70's Glasgow it would make more sense, if not I recommend reading up a bit on it before watching. The ending in general though felt like it was happening several times throughout the end of the movie, it's almost as if they didn't know how to end it and kept writing and writing. A nice touch also was the credits. To have a photo of the actor holding his real name like a mug shot and the name of the character he played next to it. Great way to get familiar with character and actor names and faces.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who has a good taste in rough British and Scottish dramas especially people who have seen other films by Peter Mullan. I will soon be reviewing his first feature film, Orphans. This film is quite realistically violent and chocked full of swearing but I think the brilliance of it could get anyone past that. Some people often say they have trouble understanding the dialogue cause of the Scottish accents but I think anyone familiar with Scottish films or culture should be fine.