#sublimesunday | Yardie Film Review and 1000 JAHM Giveaway

When I had the bookshop, Yardie, along with the Kebra Nagast and anything by Benjamin Zephaniah was a bestseller. We couldn't keep it on the shelves. If we put it in the window in the morning, it would be gone by coffee-time, with other people coming in and asking for it the day long.

I was interested last year to see that Idris Elba, of The Wire and Luther and who portrayed Nelson Mandela in the film version of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, had chosen to adapt the book as his first film production:

Victor Headley’s ferocious 1992 page-turner about an angry young Kingstonian’s progress through early 80s Hackney, east London – and striven to reshape it into broadly accessible social history. Yardie the film has ambition, confidence and energy, not to mention the novelty of being a rare homegrown period drama that isn’t beholden to pallid Downtonisms (The Guardian).

This weekend, we have bleak weather in the UK - strong winds and sudden squalls of rain as if someone's emptied a bucket of water from the heavens. Time to stay in the dry, cook some good food and catch up with a film. I picked up Yardie through the iTunes store - buy or rent.

It's a big film. The basic story is one we all know: a young boy traumatised, in this case by the shooting of his older, peace-making, brother, who gets caught up in gang life. But the film attempts to encompass much more with Shakespearean themes of death, grief and redemption.

The early part of the film, set in rural Jamaica and Kingston, is a little uneven as it tries to convey the how come? context for the later story that plays out in London. A lot is packed in and I'm not sure it all works. The gang gunfight in the street, although it had a tragic outcome, reminded me of Starsky and Hutch - I almost expected Huggy Bear to come ambling around the corner.

There was some blood-spluttering violence which had me shielding my eyes, and a wonderful comic shot of King Fox and Mr Cheung, interrupted from their drug deal in Mr Cheung's office, overlooking the mayhem going on in the garage workshop below.

Source Sheldon Shepherd as King Fox.

The film, and the main character, D (for Dennis), really comes into its own when the action moves to London. It is beautifully shot and fascinating in its detail. D, a hot-headed mad dog in Kingston, becomes, apparently, completely at ease in this new landscape, a sardonic eye on Customs officers, sloping around Hackney, coolly fronting gangsters and heavies and dealing with an attempted heist with one hand. It's like he was born for London.

The three youngsters, Sticks, Darkers and Engin, provide laugh out loud comic scenes. They are hilarious. Calvin Demba, as Sticks, is especially good (and has a bigger, more nuanced, part), a young actor to watch and I'll be checking out other stuff he's done.

Calvin Demba performing Modern World as part of Word on the Curb.

There are some good roles for women. The three muses hanging around drugs baron, Rico Grimes (excellent demented Colonel Kurtz style performance from Stephen Graham), are fairly standard one-dimensional gangster molls, although needed in places to help push the plot along. Central is Yvonne, who took herself and her baby out of the violence of Kingston and made a new life in London, where she feels safe. Where D pops round with a gun and an accomplice to sort out a problem with another character, Yvonne, immacutely groomed, turns up with an umbrella and channels her inner grandmother when she insists, "Clancy, we need to talk." Hoodlum or not, it's a woman who takes the initiative for some straight-talking and sorting the problem.

The finale is great, some fabulous dramatic tension as the story plays out between D (played by Aml Ameen) and King Fox.

Interview with Sheldon Shepherd at the London Premiere for Yardie.

1000 JAHM Giveaway

Write a post about a favourite Reggae culture film and drop a link in the comments below. It can be any kind of film - drama, documentary, home-made or professional - and it can be a review or simply why you like the film. There will be a draw from the entries posted after this post pays out, and the winning post will receive 1000 Jahm.

@sublimesunday hosted by @c0ff33a for all your random, creative or crazy posts

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