From Bullet Boy to Blue Story, the inescapable whirlpool of life in London’s youth gangs has been a cinematic theme for a while now – one which invariably comes with the standard-issue banging grime soundtrack. Daniel Glenn-Barbour’s low-budget debut doesn’t deviate from the norm, however it has a heightened introspection that marks it out, a form of uninteresting roiling despair behind the eyes, because of its unusually passive protagonist: Darrell who, because the title suggests, is ceaselessly acquiescing to the requests of others – and is performed with terrifically repressed, bobble-hatted anti-verve by Kieton Saunders-Browne.
In his late teenagers, Darrell has already served a stretch in jail on behalf of one among his gangland higher-ups and decides he can now not abdomen being patronised by snooty administration in a dead-end workplace internship. However, again underneath the wing of minor-league vendor Ben (Kirk Smith), he's nonetheless on the underside rung – and bullied for his lack of ambition. After he’s drawn again to promoting on the roads, his dad and mom kick him out and he shacks up with Ryan (Keon Martial-Phillip), a fellow gang member who desires to grow to be a chef and means that Darrell too is able to higher.
Sure Man places a finger on how resignation to an absence of choices in life might be, in lots of circumstances, what results in gang embroilment; Saunders-Browne’s wayward gaze, all the time fleeing for the corners of the room, suggests his character would fairly be wherever else. The civilian/prison tug-of-war will not be new, however Glenn-Barbour approaches it with a nervy sensitivity behind the digital camera that makes a optimistic of the movie’s tough edges, whereas diligent characterisation probes how Darrell has absorbed his father’s vulnerability.
Maybe pushing the character research extra on this course, fairly than happening the well-worn gang path, would have helped, as Sure Man struggles to search out its personal form. However as a press release on thug life, it’s downbeat with out a lot self-pitying fatalism, and Saunders-Browne’s astute, sullen efficiency is all too convincing.
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