Greenock is just down the road from where I live, in fact there's rivalry bordering on enmity between the town where I work, Paisley and Greenock, where this super-realistic Ken Loach film was made. I can therefore completely identify from first-hand observation, although rarely, thankfully from experience, the young, foul mouthed, ill-mannered, drug-dependant, "neds" (non-educated delinquents), who largely populate the film. In fact, in their tracksuit and trainers garb, they still roam the streets today, usually in a zombie-like, drug-hazed trance.
The central character of the film, young Liam and his best-mate Pinball obviously don't go to school and out on the streets, work the margins, both small-time partners, roaming the local pubs selling cigarettes on the fly. Liam's mum is in prison, presumably on drugs-related charges and is due for release soon, but she's in tow with a hardened, petty criminal boy-friend who Liam hates, while also in the family mix is Liam's older sister, a single parent with a young child, who doesn't get on with their mum and bizarrely, a grandfather who's into the same petty crime as the mother's boyfriend. A chance discovery of the boyfriend's drug-stash gives the soon-to-be-sixteen year-old a golden chance to make big money quickly and buy a dream caravan for the family to make a literally clean start but instead leads him into a shady underworld of crime and violence.
Everyone lets Liam down in the film, eventually himself too and at the end, we see him in the time-honoured teenage mixed-up confusion traceable all the way back to Mod Jimmy in "Quadrophenia" and of course the original cause-less rebel of James Dean. The language and violence in the film are extreme but trust me, true to life and the little snippets of humour get steadily darker as the film progresses. Liam's progress from early-on comically getting a reversing truck to run over a policeman's motorbike in a gag used before by Woody Allen to the "sting" he falls victim to when required to stab a man to death in an underworld initiation test shows how far he comes / falls in his journey into darkness.
Filmed in real locations certainly familiar to me and without his sometime trait of attendant sentimentality, I think this is one of the best Ken Loach films I've seen. The acting by the exclusively Scottish and often first-time actors is mostly convincing, with Compston in particular showing the talent that has deservedly kept him in work ever since, although usually in rather typecast strong, silent parts in movies and on TV.
This was a believable, gritty warts-and-all slice of life of a random teenager's nowhere existence in the grey, economic wasteland of latter day West of Scotland. It's grim up north, believe me.
The central character of the film, young Liam and his best-mate Pinball obviously don't go to school and out on the streets, work the margins, both small-time partners, roaming the local pubs selling cigarettes on the fly. Liam's mum is in prison, presumably on drugs-related charges and is due for release soon, but she's in tow with a hardened, petty criminal boy-friend who Liam hates, while also in the family mix is Liam's older sister, a single parent with a young child, who doesn't get on with their mum and bizarrely, a grandfather who's into the same petty crime as the mother's boyfriend. A chance discovery of the boyfriend's drug-stash gives the soon-to-be-sixteen year-old a golden chance to make big money quickly and buy a dream caravan for the family to make a literally clean start but instead leads him into a shady underworld of crime and violence.
Everyone lets Liam down in the film, eventually himself too and at the end, we see him in the time-honoured teenage mixed-up confusion traceable all the way back to Mod Jimmy in "Quadrophenia" and of course the original cause-less rebel of James Dean. The language and violence in the film are extreme but trust me, true to life and the little snippets of humour get steadily darker as the film progresses. Liam's progress from early-on comically getting a reversing truck to run over a policeman's motorbike in a gag used before by Woody Allen to the "sting" he falls victim to when required to stab a man to death in an underworld initiation test shows how far he comes / falls in his journey into darkness.
Filmed in real locations certainly familiar to me and without his sometime trait of attendant sentimentality, I think this is one of the best Ken Loach films I've seen. The acting by the exclusively Scottish and often first-time actors is mostly convincing, with Compston in particular showing the talent that has deservedly kept him in work ever since, although usually in rather typecast strong, silent parts in movies and on TV.
This was a believable, gritty warts-and-all slice of life of a random teenager's nowhere existence in the grey, economic wasteland of latter day West of Scotland. It's grim up north, believe me.