Bad boy posturing with a touch of tenderness

Wrongly condemned for glamorising teenage violence, drug-taking and sex, the original film was shock-ingly prescient in its depiction of an underage London underclass then rarely seen on screen, but it was also repetitive and incoherent. Adulthood is, in every sense, a more mature work.

It marks the directorial debut of Doctor Who star Noel Clark, who scripted both films and plays hoodie Sam, just out of jail for the murder of his schoolfriend at the end of Kidult-hood. Sam's had the badness scared out of him in prison and wants to go straight but the cycle of violence is hard to break.

Old foe Jay (frighteningly intense Adam Deacon) is out for revenge and there's a new breed of feral youngster on the Notting Hill council estates happy to kill for cash.

As a writer Clark is growing in confidence and ability, as a director he's remarkably assured, but as an actor he is riveting, with a stillness born of contained energy. Adulthood benefits hugely from the complex, fluctuating relationship between Sam and Lexi, another damaged out-cast, sensitively but unsentimentally played by former EastEnders alumnus Scarlett Alice Johnson.

While the street-slang and threats and bad-boy posturing comes as thick and fast as in Kidulthood, the sequel is less relentlessly grim. Without offering pat solutions, it holds out the possibility that youths can choose, that a life of crime and violence need not be an inevitable product of a deprived upbringing, and that tenderness is attainable.

True, the film stumbles a bit into gangsta cliché as it hustles towards a resolution, and it has some rough edges. But rough edges are what distinguish it from most other British films. Noel Clark swears this is the last film he'll make in this grimy, urban vein, but whatever he does next will be worth watching.

Adulthood is released on Friday.

Adulthood
Cert: 15