Ill Manors Review

Ben Drew’s 2012 film Ill Manors, about life after growing up in foster care shows the characters doing what they feel they have to for them to get by, even if some of those decisions are bad ones. Using his rapping as a way of narrating the story gave it a unique feel, instead of it just being a completely stereotypical film about gangs, violence and crime.

The film shows people what others feel is necessary to get along in life. Even if we don't agree with their choices and actions, we can understand the reasons behind them. At times I felt the storyline was a bit difficult to follow as there was always a lot going on at once with the different gangs. The storyline would switch between the gangs so that the audience could see what each were doing at the time. The locations used are the expected stereotypical ones you would expect to see in a film like this where drugs, gangs and violence are involved, for example a park where the gang hang out waiting for people to come and buy the drugs from them, this makes it work in its genre.

The acting, well, what is supposed to be called acting, I personally felt was poor from some of the actors involved in the film. There were some lines in the film that could have sounded so much better and come across as more convincing, and I think this applies mostly to the character Kirby (Keith Coggins) as it could have been played so much better.

This isn't the type of film I would choose to watch for myself and the reason behind that is because I don't particularly enjoy this sort of drama in a film as that's not my scene. Seeing this film gives me more of a reason to dislike it as I didn't enjoy the acting or storyline. I wouldn't recommend it to people I know unless I was aware that they enjoyed this type of thing.