Must See Movie...

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

100 Streets is an undernourished and underwhelming slice of life drama set in London focussing on six characters who only obliquely interact with each other.Idris Elba plays Max, a former rugby star turned television pundit. His wife Emily (Gemma Arterton) caught him cheating with the babysitter and they have split up. Emily is now seeing someone else but it is Max whose life is unravelling with drugs and booze.Kingsley (Franz Drameh) is a young drug dealer in the hood, he has been in trouble with the law but finds an avenue to express himself as a street poet when he meets an aged actor.The most interesting story is of cab driver George (Charlie Creed-Miles) who with his wife Kathy (Kierston Wareing) are hoping to adopt a child but face several knocks including the revelation that George was a hooligan in his youth. The couple strive to pick up the pieces of their live in a positive way.Elba has the more showy role which includes his rather public meltdown but the whole thing just felt rather depressing and undistinguished.

I take issue with the reviewer who felt it was unfair to black people.yes the poor living in the projects were typical of the pressure put on the poor to join crime.however the single mom was a great role model for her son setting limits and consequences.He didn't see that. the sports hero displayed how the adulation and substances can take someone down a bad path,regardless of color. the love between the cabbie and his wife ,though struggling was so uplifting,what a sweet character.the whole plot of the film depicts that people can be capable of greatness despite being flawed. the white man who saw potential in Kinsley that recognized his talent and I understand his anger at beating the perpetrator. one can learn a lot from this movie!

This film continues the never ending stereotyping of black people mostly black males in the inner cities of USA and here in England. This is a very disturbing film, but not for the story that it presents but for the unfair depiction of black males. The white filmmakers who are guilty of this stereotyping of black people have their black actors in their films use excessive profanity. The black characters in their films are also very angry and confrontational. So is the case in this film. The two major black characters here are Max (Idris Elba) a former Rugby star now a ghost of his once famous persona. And Kingsley (Frank Drameh) a street gang member who finds himself living in a world of crime and no opportunities for him to get out of his ghetto lifestyle.Both characters in this film are very violent and use excessive profanity. While the white characters in this film are very civil and calm and do not use any profanity. This depiction in this film was created and written by screenwriter Leon Butler a Caucasian man. As many of these stereotyped films showing blacks people as drug dealers, gang members and even everyday people all using excessive profanity and having confrontational personalities are created and produced by white men. There is a theme that these white filmmakers emphasize, that the white characters in their films are civilized and superior to the black people who are depicted in an inferior manner. There are many civilized calm mannered black people in the USA and in England who do not use excessive profanity, some even prefer the ballet or symphony music to rap, or golf to basketball.Yet writers like Mr. Butler continue to present black people in the most negative manner. I know there are black people who are in very dire situations in England and the USA. Yet this film does not have any positive black characters in the film. Either police officers or anybody! The film story sets the pace to slowly show how the main black characters Max and Kingsley each deal with their problems by using excessive violence with graphic loud profanity.The story has an interracial marriage between Max and Emily (Gemma Arterton) an ultra-conservative white woman who could pass for the wife of a politician. Their marriage is very strained because of Max's affairs with other women and other vices. Whenever Max shows up at Emily's home (Max has an apartment) she treats him with aloof disgust with a quick hi and goodbye attitude. Early in the film we are rooting for Max to get his life back in shape and reconcile with Emily. It's interesting to note that this is the 50th anniversary of the *controversial film (*for the 1960's) "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" The first major film that showed a black man played by Sidney Poitier meeting the parents and his future in-laws played by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Their young white daughter played by Katherine Houghton. Sidney Poitier's character in this film is civilized and mild mannered as the white characters in this film. Poitier playing the black man set to marry their daughter, he uses no profanity nor does he even have an inner city urban accent.In "100 Streets" Max is a man in self-destruct mode. He claims it's all about his and Emily's kids that he wants to make his marriage work. But even when Emily gives Max another chance. He has sex with other women, gets drunk in public and snorts coke, before he is to appear on live TV as a Rugby commentator, because of his coke addiction he has to leave the TV studio. Emily was seeing another man but not secretly. He is Jake a civil white man who is very caring and mild mannered. Much like Sidney Poitier's black character some fifty years ago. When Max mistakenly believes that Emily is picking Jake over him. Max goes ballistic, he appears in Emily's home on her balcony without a shirt on waving a rifle shouting profanity to all the white spectators on the street below. Emily on the phone with Max using a calm caring voice trying to get Max to surrender before the police sharp shooters kill him. Emily's kindness is met with the most graphic violent rage and profanity. As Max hurls hatred at Emily. But Emily prevails and is successful in having Max surrender as he is arrested on the scene.How the depiction of black males has degenerated in fifty years since Sidney Poitier character appeared in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." It is refreshing that new black filmmakers are now releasing films that show black people not as drug dealers or violent characters who have to use profanity. But as positive black characters on the theater screen.

I realize the title does suggest a anthology of stories, In fact the movie technically should be called Three Streets as it contains three stories about three different people who you could say live on three different streets in London (talking more socially and culturally) .From the trailer, I was expecting just one street with Idris Elba and Gemma Arterton. That could have been just me knowing who these two people are and just focusing on that part or it could have been a trailer met to draw in Americans with two faces we would recognized.Either way, Elba and Arterton's street take a side step for me, as the most interesting street was about a guy named Kingsley (Played by a British face that I've seen before but can't place) who just got out of jail and does not want to go back into the life of a drug dealer so he gives acting a try after befriending one, but the streets keep trying to pull him back in (Oh wait, this dude is Firestorm on the series, The Flash).The other story was a touching love story about a loving couple who are having trouble extending their family though adoption.But I say all this not to suggest that Elba's performance as an Ex-Rugby player dealing with life off the field, which causes him to screw up royally with his wife (Played by Arterton), was not a great moment in the film, I mean it's Idris Elba, but it was not my favorite.100 Streets three stories work very well as a whole movie and it's worth seeing.http://cinemagardens.com