Shank

Debutante director Pearce claims to have drawn this tale of a gang member coming out and cutting loose from real events. It certainly aims for urgency, its sincere sentiments backed up by hip-hop cutting and a stark opening 20 minutes. Unfortunately, any investment made up to that point is pushed aside, and the audience are positively happy-slapped with endless clichés, contrivances, a baggy internal logic and some of the worst acting outside of Doctors. Pitching itself somewhere between Kidulthood and My Beautiful Laundrette, the film sorely lacks the authenticity of the former, with nothing of the latter’s subversive script or deft direction. In the end, it all amounts to a fairly condescending depiction of a working class ruffian learning that it’s OK to be gay from a mincing French rich-kid (complete with pink shirt, parasol and distaste for chips in curry sauce), at times laugh out loud funny and culminating in a badly judged sequence of risible revelations and violence. [Lisa Bourke]