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Derek Malcolm's rating
1 Day is impressively non-moralistic
By
Derek Malcolm
6 Nov 2009
“Something terrible is happening to young men in our inner cities,” says Penny Woolcock, whose new film, made on the unlovely streets of Birmingham, is labelled the first British hip-hop musical.
Her characters are almost all black males armed to the teeth with knives and guns.
Apparently they speak several languages — school English, street talk, code and patois — and here, they use a mixture of the last three, which means the lack of subtitles makes things difficult.
The protagonist is Flash (Dylan Duffus), who deals drugs, has five children by three mothers and gets into trouble when Angel (Yohjance Watson) comes out of prison and demands the £500,000 he left him to look after. You can imagine what follows.
The point of the film is elsewhere, showing us a picture of young black men that will make most of us deeply depressed.
Undoubtedly well acted and shot, and with a rip-roaring hip-hop score, it’s impressively non-moralistic, just showing us how it is. That may be why Birmingham’s cinemas have refused to show it.
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