Crime Drama

It’s ten minutes to midnight.

Released over twenty years ago between 1986 and 87, to say that Watchmen was an influential success would be a pretty epic understatement. It cemented Alan Moore’s reputation as a writer in the graphic novel medium and since then, more than a fair few of his graphic novels have (much to his chagrin) been adapted for the big screen, most notably V For Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine, and Jack the Ripper conspiracy theory yarn From Hell. His treatment of the Joker in his celebrated Batman one-shot The Killing Joke, is widely cited as being a major influence on both Tim Burton’s 1989 movie, the subsequent Batman animated series, and recent outing The Dark Knight.

No Watchmen, no Heroes. Simple as.

The comic book is set in an alternative universe where superheroes exist – it is 1985, and the Cold War is on the verge of becoming a very, very hot one.

In this universe, the USA won the Vietnam War, and Watergate never happened – Nixon is still the President. The West is defended by a small elite corps of licensed superheroes, the most powerful of which, Dr. Manhattan, has given the States an edge over the Soviets. However, things take a turn for the worse – the story begins with the discovery that The Comedian, an ultra-patriotic American superhero is found dead, having been hurled several stories from his apartment.

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Every so often a film or television series manages that most rare of feats, it becomes more than its medium and it is ranked alongside the pillars of culture that prop up our conversions and language for years to come.  The Wire is one of those works of art.

To dismiss it as a mere cop show does not do it justice but the show is set in Baltimore and chronicles the struggle of a detail of cops trying to trap a high end drug target, whilst dealing with the vagaries of bureaucracy that are present in all areas of public service.  The cops and the dealers are treated as part of the same puzzle and equal weight is given to both in the program.  The Wire has a high level of characterisation not seen in any other TV show going at the moment.  You will feel for the dealers and hate some of the cops as the line between what’s good and bad becomes increasingly greyed and dependant on context.  There is comic relief combined with searing tragedy and a majestic charm arises from even the most hopeless of situations.

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With hotly anticipated follow-up Adulthood now showing at UK cinemas, there’s never better time to get reacquainted with the cast of 2006’s Kidulthood, a rough and ready tale of bored British suburban youths, which catapulted Noel Clarke to stardom for his direction and his portrayal of bullying bad guy Sam in the film, became something of a word of mouth phenomenon, and a success story for independent homegrown film-making talent.

Labelled by some as a poster movie for happy slapping, Kidulthood principally revolves around three teenagers and their associates, who are given the day off school after the suicide of a fellow student; what follows is a relentless run through a hyperreal 24 hours covering sex, violence, drink, drugs, theft, betrayal, knifing, gun toting, pregnancy…

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Jennifer Marsh (Diana Lane) is a widowed FBI officer who spends her nights online tracking down identity thieves, fraudsters and cyber pervs. One night she stumbles across a website named killwithme.com where a cute kitten is being tortured to death. A disclaimer on the main page states that the more people who visit the site, the worse the killings will be - a few nights later the psychotic webmaster has moved onto humans.

Following the formula of Se7en, the killer is driven by a perverse moral agenda – to expose the people’s voyeuristic tendencies through ‘torture porn’. In one of the films many clichés, Marsh is caught between fighting crime and neglecting her daughter, who also becomes a target for the psychopath.

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Seasoned action man and all-round geezer Jason Statham (Collateral, Snatch) and Saffron Burrows (Frida, Deep Blue Sea) star in this comic thriller documenting the 1971 robbery of the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank. Oddly enough, the robbers’ walkie-talkie conversations were recorded by a radio ham, but when he reported the incident, no action was taken…

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