Undescribable Perfection

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This has a street-wise and gritty feel to it (i.e. no glamour prostitutes in luscious locations). After being forced by her pimp, a prostitute lures a young homeless girl to perform for a client. Things go awry and they are forced to flee. They are then pursued by the pimps plus their clients. It all leads to a forceful conclusion.The pace is frantic throughout as we move from seedy London surroundings to Brighton on the coast of England. The language is colloquial and gives added depth (I had the sub-titles on). Lorraine Stanley (the prostitute) and Georgia Groome (the homeless girl) provide a tough texture for this film.

Let me start by saying that for the first 95% or so, I loved this movie. Gritty, fast-paced and the Joanne role was astonishingly well acted. But there is absolutely nothing that annoys me more than a good, realistic film with a joke ending like that. Why would the pedo's son go to all the trouble of terrifying and traumatizing the girl far more than his father likely did? If the kid didn't need years of therapy from being tied to a bed, she sure as hell did after being chased all over England, dragged to what she thought was her grave then seeing two people get their heads blown off. What was the point of that? Secondly, why was Kelly given a moral free pass from the director? She sure played a significant role in the kid being tied up by a pedophile. Take the scene where she's waiting while Joanne is upstairs. She only goes to help when she hears screaming. So what, it would have been OK if the pedo had just gone about the business of destroying a child quietly? Why wasn't she shot with the two thugs? I have no patience for the "she was a victim too and had no choice" argument. When confronted with destroying a child she had all kinds of choices- run away, take the beating from her pimp etc. Finally, this film strives to be realistic. Well, sorry to say it but in real-life Kelly and Joanne end up in an unmarked grave with bullets in the back of their heads. In real life, Kelly would be an addict willing to give up her kid sister, never mind some kid she's never met. It sucks but it's true and this would have been a more meaningful, more honest film with that ending rather than the laughable fairy-tale tacked onto this thing.

All those six or seven million Britons who are reported to be unemployable, because of low skills or poor attitude, would be viewers of this picture --- if only they could afford to see it. From their ranks are drawn all the pathetic characters: the only heroic figure is a child, around whose virginity the plot revolves. She is also the only character with any "background", i.e. a grandmother in a nice house in Devon. It's another of those films that don't have a hero that I usually excoriate and award 1 point. This gets eight, because Paul David Williams threw the script together in a weekend, raised a measly 80 grand to shoot it, and used actors and non-actors who all had a good laugh making it in a couple of weeks, and with a big dose of luck and the UK Film Council packaging it, it all came together. For the price of a big car, Williams got a movie reputation: not that he seems to have done much with it. His latest, four years later, is another cheap effort. But this is UK film-making today: cheap budgets, films thrown together in a week or two, distribution faulty. We'll have to wait and see if Williams is a sleeper like Paul Greengrass, who got two hundred million in Hollywood budgets as a reward for making the massive lie "United 93". I don't think Williams will do that, but these days you never know.

This is a very raw, rough first feature (BAFTRA nominated) by Paul Andrew Williams.He wrote & produced the film as well.The film runs a very fast 85 minutes including 4 minutes of credits. It is a low budget film about some very unlikeable people, the sort nearly all of us would not bother with or would want know. They all are brutal & foul mouthed.However we do care, to some degree for them.The cast are mostly newcomers or featured players from TV) I never heard of any of them). I definitely want to see them in other films. Lorraine Stanley plays a working street girl. Georgia Groome (all of 14 when film was made) is new to the streets.Johnny Downs is the evil pimp, & Sam Spruell as the sadistic son of a client. They & the others in cast do fine jobs as these unsavory person.Normally I stay far from this type of film,BUT this time I was mesmerized, The hand held camera work was not as annoying as it usually is & most of my readers know I eschew foul language. Here it comes across as natural. It is like a Tarantino movie without the humour. That part I liked.Being a minor,low budget,no name cast feature from the UK It only had a short few theatre run in the USA.in Feb 2008.Look for this on Cable or rent it,I am sure you will agree it is watchable.There are some plot holes, but film moves fast & they are easily ignored.Ratings: ***1/2 (out of 4) 91 points (out of 100) IMDb 8 (out of 10)