Bullet Boy

On the face of it, the whole story of Bullet Boy seems pretty clichéd and predictable. Ricky, a black teenage Londoner (played by Ashley Walters from So Solid Crew), leaves prison with thoughts only of going straight, but before even going back to the flat where he lives with his single mother and 12-year-old brother Curtis, his friend Wisdom (Leon Black) has already unwittingly led him on the first few steps down a depressing and ultimately tragic path.

The scenario is routine crime thriller stuff, and yet it's a side of British cinema that's rarely viewed, and its central topic - that of gun crime - is one you don't see dealt with head-on in the work of the older generation of socially conscious filmmakers like Ken Loach.

Perhaps it's director Saul Dibb's background in hard-hitting television documentaries that makes him the right man for the job. Whatever the reason, he's assembled a small, excellent cast, with Walters understated as Ricky, trying to do the right thing whilst remaining loyal to his "bred'ren" Wisdom, who we learn had earlier saved his life.

The first time we see Ricky arrive home, in the dead of night, a single lamp half-illuminates a 'Welcome Home' banner on the wall. His mother, played with real sensitivity by Claire Perkins, has finally given up and gone to bed, after her guests have left and Ricky's no-show surprise party has ended in disappointment. As he retreats to the bedroom he shares with Curtis (Luke Fraser), the boy eyes him slipping a handgun into a sock drawer. The weapon is only begrudgingly accepted by Ricky as a gift from Wisdom, following an afternoon altercation with a local hood.

In those first few scenes, the path that Bullet Boy will take is set out. Soon aware that Ricky is getting in too deep, his mother's preacher boyfriend pleads with him to stay out of trouble. Most of the key scenes in the film are seen through the eyes of Curtis, who on one hand idolises his errant older brother, but still goes to church with his mother. In his simple understanding of right and wrong, he represents both the conscience of the story, and ultimately what optimism there is in it, despite, or even because of, a near-tragedy he almost finds himself at the centre of.

No matter that several of the key incidents in Bullet Boy are telegraphed a mile off, and that it occasionally verges on the hackneyed, it's far too bold and important a film to be criticised for such trifles. It's also not excessively violent, despite its title, which means that the few gunshots heard in the picture are as shocking as they would be had they been fired off outside your window. An audacious debut.

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