City Of Tiny Lights (15.)
Directed by Pete Travis.
Starring Riz Ahmed, James Floyd, Cush Jumbo, Roshan Seth, Hannah Rae and Billie Piper. 110 mins.
This is a private eye movie, the kind where a down-at-heel scruff gets £300 a day, plus expenses, to solve a mystery. In this case the scruff is Riz Ahmed's Tommy Akbar who walks the mean streets of West London as he investigates the mystery of a missing Russian prostitute. And after about 20 minutes I'd have been quite prepared to organise a whip round to have him not bother, keep his nose out and walk away. Forget if Tommy, it's Shepherd's Bush.
The private eye drama has held its value because it provides a potent but painless vehicle for exposing what form social injustice and corruption will be taking this season. Taken from a novel by Patrick Neate, City takes in a radicalising Islamic youth centre, shady intelligence agencies and ruthless gentrification. It appears to be tapping into something urgent and real but it is way out of the loop. (The closing credits are accompanied by a tune from the Streets first album, a piece of music so old, so thoroughly happened rather than happening, even I could identify it.) My interest plug holed the moment his old flame Billie Piper turned up, bringing a whole flashback strand to the narrative, which obliges our hero to reminisce at regular intervals about his teenage years and a life shaping incident that happened back then. The problem with this is that it butts in on the real story; means you get more of the flashbacked teen Billie Piper than actual grown up Billie Piper; and it effectively gives away the ending, or at least dramatically narrows down the narrative's option.
The film is to some extent a gumshoe pastiche, but it is still dull to have Ahmed constantly puffing away at the ciggies and knocking back double Wild Turkeys. The Wild Turkey has its own back story and the vices are an integral part of establishing his identity as a British Muslim, but it is still ridiculous that you can't go looking for a missing person without trying to be Humphrey Bogart. As a thriller the film is a non starter because the plot moves at a pace more suited to a three part TV drama than a standalone film. At one point Tommy realises that something he revealed has put some people he cares about in danger. But he realizes this some half hour of screentime after he did it, which could represent anything up to a day in the narrative.
And a film called City of Tiny Lights should look a damn sight better than this does. When I travel around London I'm usually struck by how striking it is visually, how perversely enticing all the elevated train tracks cutting across terraced roads are, the glaring menace of our light pollution. London should look great in movies, but it rarely does. Nobody has ever come close to doing for it, what Heat did for LA. This comes to us from the director of Dredd, but if you didn't know you'd think it was from someone who'd knocked out a few music promos. He does at least try to capture some of capital's visual tensions but fails completely. Tiny Lights? This is a City of small scale stories, faltering slow mo and limited circumference rain machines.
Directed by Pete Travis.
Starring Riz Ahmed, James Floyd, Cush Jumbo, Roshan Seth, Hannah Rae and Billie Piper. 110 mins.
This is a private eye movie, the kind where a down-at-heel scruff gets £300 a day, plus expenses, to solve a mystery. In this case the scruff is Riz Ahmed's Tommy Akbar who walks the mean streets of West London as he investigates the mystery of a missing Russian prostitute. And after about 20 minutes I'd have been quite prepared to organise a whip round to have him not bother, keep his nose out and walk away. Forget if Tommy, it's Shepherd's Bush.
The private eye drama has held its value because it provides a potent but painless vehicle for exposing what form social injustice and corruption will be taking this season. Taken from a novel by Patrick Neate, City takes in a radicalising Islamic youth centre, shady intelligence agencies and ruthless gentrification. It appears to be tapping into something urgent and real but it is way out of the loop. (The closing credits are accompanied by a tune from the Streets first album, a piece of music so old, so thoroughly happened rather than happening, even I could identify it.) My interest plug holed the moment his old flame Billie Piper turned up, bringing a whole flashback strand to the narrative, which obliges our hero to reminisce at regular intervals about his teenage years and a life shaping incident that happened back then. The problem with this is that it butts in on the real story; means you get more of the flashbacked teen Billie Piper than actual grown up Billie Piper; and it effectively gives away the ending, or at least dramatically narrows down the narrative's option.
The film is to some extent a gumshoe pastiche, but it is still dull to have Ahmed constantly puffing away at the ciggies and knocking back double Wild Turkeys. The Wild Turkey has its own back story and the vices are an integral part of establishing his identity as a British Muslim, but it is still ridiculous that you can't go looking for a missing person without trying to be Humphrey Bogart. As a thriller the film is a non starter because the plot moves at a pace more suited to a three part TV drama than a standalone film. At one point Tommy realises that something he revealed has put some people he cares about in danger. But he realizes this some half hour of screentime after he did it, which could represent anything up to a day in the narrative.
And a film called City of Tiny Lights should look a damn sight better than this does. When I travel around London I'm usually struck by how striking it is visually, how perversely enticing all the elevated train tracks cutting across terraced roads are, the glaring menace of our light pollution. London should look great in movies, but it rarely does. Nobody has ever come close to doing for it, what Heat did for LA. This comes to us from the director of Dredd, but if you didn't know you'd think it was from someone who'd knocked out a few music promos. He does at least try to capture some of capital's visual tensions but fails completely. Tiny Lights? This is a City of small scale stories, faltering slow mo and limited circumference rain machines.
