'London to Brighton' is a modern film, but has a peculiarly eighties feel to it. In the heyday of Thatcherism, an endless stream of radical film makers wanted to document the plight of the underclass. While Britain has become more affluent in the subsequent years, this does not mean that all social problems have disappeared; but except for films about the plight of immigrants, this sort of movie appears to have vanished as a genre. Perhaps this is one signal of Thatcherism triumph: that (usually middle class) film-makers are no longer interested in the plight of the poor. 'London to Brighton' is not just (or even mainly) a work of social compassion: it's a violent gangster thriller, but it takes place in a Britain best described as squalid. And one is struck at how unfashionable it seems to be to paint the country in such a light; and how commonplace it once was. Aside from these observations, the film is well acted, beautifully shot and and genuinely harrowing. But it takes place in a landscape almost devoid of hope. We don't know what made the characters into the people they are - and I found myself increasingly detached at the end, because of the clear impossibility of a happy ending. Indeed, I didn't know really what I was supposed to make of the fact that the eventual conclusion was not the worst imaginable. It's a short film, but although the initial premise is gripping, it eventually suffers from the absence of wider context - "girl goes home" is a less powerful ending to a story if we have no idea of why she went away. That's not to say it's bad, in many ways it feels more real than Neal Jordan's authentic eighties gangster and prostitutes movie 'Mona Lisa', to which it makes an interesting companion piece. But Jordan's movie had a more involving plot.
Review of London to Brighton
