I didn’t have to get too far into Attack the Block before I started to realize that it didn’t feel
like any movie I had seen in a long time. This gem from the UK is about a group
of young teenagers who get swept up into an adventure, but it in no way
resembles the kind of movie that description brings to mind. Despite the fact
that it’s about invading aliens and a gang of kids banding together to take
them on, this isn’t one of the homogenized, PC movies that would come out of
modern Hollywood. The kids in this
movie curse, they do drugs, they get their faces bitten off. For much of the
film you’re not even sure if you like the little punks, but eventually what
you’re watching takes on such a Goonies and
Monster Squad throwback feel that you
can’t help but just give in and acquiesce to their hooligan charms.
That’s not to say that Attack
the Block is homage, spoof, or parody though. It’s a film that wears its
influences on its sleeve, but still manages to feel unique and to stand alone
as its own thing. For a first time director, Joe Cornish already has a very
strong and defined voice. A lot was said about the way this year’s Super 8 was made in tribute to classic
Steven Spielberg films, and seeing as how Spielberg’s presence is always felt
looming over this picture, I’m sure comparisons between the two will be made.
But Attack the Block takes the family
feel of Spielberg’s gems, and mixes it with the more explicit and violent genre
works of the 80s as well. Residing deep in its DNA is the influence of
directors like Joe Dante, Walter Hill, John Carpenter, and James Cameron. And
still, these are modern characters talking in modern voices very unique to
Cornish’s writing style. If you were to show this one to a group of today’s
teenagers, it wouldn’t feel old fashioned to them in the slightest.
Attack the Block doesn’t
do anything too out of the box or revolutionary, but every individual aspect of
the film is handled well, and they all come together to create a sort of gourmet-recipe
genre film that feels more satisfying than its contemporaries. The most basic
ingredient we’re working with is good action, but the action becomes heightened
when paired with effective comedy. It’s very clear to me that Cornish could
make a successful straight comedy, but instead of that he does us one better
and marries a lot of clever quips and one-liners with killer alien monsters,
chase scenes, and firework battles. In the 80s, movies like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future created a golden age of the action comedy, but
it’s not a type of movie you often see done well these days. Look at even a
movie like Paul, which was made by
some of the same people involved in this one, and Attack the Block is head and shoulders more fun and funnier. It’s refreshing
to see a movie like this succeed at a high level.
The next killer ingredient is great performances from fresh
actors. Our main group of thugs is lead by a kid named Moses (John Boyega). Despite
only being fifteen, Moses is hard and independent beyond his years. But his
maturity is just a put on. Really he’s as confused and scared a kid as anyone,
and he compensates by taking charge of his group of friends and living up to
hood stereotypes of masculinity. Boyega is subtle, yet affecting in the role,
and he’s going to have a lot of new job offers coming his way after people
start seeing this one, I’m sure. Joining Moses is a crew of kids who, despite
all being from the same neighborhood, all have their own personalities and add
something unique to the film. Alex Esmail, especially, adds a lot of humor as
Pest, the squirrely fast talking one of the group. And Sammy Williams and
Michael Ajao are so adorable as the pre-pubescent thug wannabes Probs and
Mayhem that they had my audience audibly cheering with glee at their bluster
and enthusiasm. Also joining the party is a young nursing student named Sam (Jodie
Whittaker). She’s the broke kind of med student who lives in a rough
neighborhood because she can’t afford anything else, and when we meet her she’s
being mugged by Moses and his friends. There’s probably not a worse way to meet
someone, but after the aliens starts attacking they manage to bond. Sam is a
Godsend of a character, as seeing the boys’ masculine bravado from her adult
point of view adds the film another layer that movies about kids don’t usually
have. Nick Frost shows up as an epically lazy drug dealer, and Luke Treadaway
as an overly educated and overly white weed connoisseur that is out of his
element interacting with the denizens of the block. They’re both hysterical,
and while they only hang out around the edges of the film, whenever our focus
goes back to them they manage to liven things up. No matter who you are,
chances are there’s a character stuck in this mess that you can relate to.
Action, comedy, varied and likable characters, what more can
a film offer? How about a little social commentary to raise everything up an intellectual
notch and make the goings on even more complex and satisfying? Yes, I’ll have
that. Without standing up and making any statements or trying to teach any
lessons, following Moses and his crew as they deal with killer alien-gorilla-wolf
things starts to become an exploration of London’s disenfranchised, lower class
youth and how they can be vilified by the media. A lot of what Moses and his
crew do they do because they are playing roles that are created for them.
Instead of being looked at as kids who need to be guided, society often writes
them off and views them as monsters. And we’re not exempted from that. Due to
the way the boys are introduced, it takes a long while to warm up to them. When
we meet them they’re in hoods and masks, just faceless thugs out there preying
on the weak. But slowly, over the course of the film, they become nuanced,
real, and sympathetic. And this is all presented to us very subtly through
subtext. The laughs and thrills don’t need to stop in order to explore deeper
themes, and you don’t always have to “turn your brain off” to enjoy a fun
movie. Our brains want to have fun just as much as anybody and shouldn’t ever
need to be turned off.
The last aspect of Attack
the Block that puts it a step above similar films is its creature design
and effects. The aliens we get here are simple, but fearsome. They have one
unique visual element that sets them apart and makes them memorable, but they
don’t have any magic powers or pseudo science nonsense that you have to follow
along with and keep straight. These things are just big angry beasts that want
to kill you, and that helps keep the momentum moving forward. Probably my
favorite part of Cornish’s approach to the monster movie, however, is that his
beasts are brought to life with practical effects. We get real puppet stuff,
real guys wearing alien suits, real fake blood, and it is all so much better
looking and more tactile than the often shoddy CG work that gets over employed
in today’s movies. You never see the monsters move in an unnatural, jarring
way, or watch actors struggle to react to things that just aren’t there, and
the difference is pronounced and positive. They say that limitations spur
creativity. That the on-set disasters on movies like Jaws and Star Wars forced
their directors to go in different, more interesting directions than they
originally envisioned; and that definitely seems to be the case here. Attack the Block couldn’t have been any
better realized with a bigger budget or higher end special effects. Watching
the aliens run and jump and bite and tear gave me flashbacks to Carpenter’s
effects work in The Thing, and in my
book that’s a very good thing to be compared to.
When you mix all the ingredients of this film together, what you get is a movie that
is more concerned with being awesome than making money. It’s more concerned
with feeling real than being a spectacle. And it’s more concerned with putting
big grins on the faces of people with some taste than it is marketing itself
toward the widest audience possible. Attack
the Block is a sniper’s bullet aimed directly at fans of film, where most
of the other alien invasion movies this year are a shotgun barrel of buckshot
trying to hit as big a crowd as possible. Those other movies are likely to get
your attention, but this one will blow you away.
