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5 Gritty British Films That You Need To See

Rightly or wrongly, British cinema is often thought of by the masses in two main contexts. The first is the period drama. Lofty accents, grand antique sets, rolling countrysides and costumes that appear tight enough to cut off the actors' air supply. You know the sort. The kind of movie where you can expect to see Kate Winslet breezing through grand rooms wearing a fancy, frilly dress at any given moment.

1) Starred Up

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One of the special things about movies is the gut effect they have; passing your cerebral point and clobbering around your emotions before you’ve even had the chance to work out how you got to feel that way in the first place. David Mackenzie’s Starred Up is a film that summarizes this effect of movies aptly and even goes one further, mercilessly hauling you through the emotional wringer until you’re left as weak as a kitten.

The film depicts high-risk youth offender Eric Love (Jack O’Connell) being “starred up” to the same adult prison where his father resides.

Eric is angry. So, so angry. And absolutely terrifying. There is no controlling an individual like this, even within the high-security walls of an establishment that caters for those who’re deemed unfit to live among society. The raw, powerful emotion falls right in line with the gritty aesthetic of the prison scene in Starred Up, as O’Connell provides a remarkable performance that peels away more emotional layers than most actors display in a lifetime of work.

In his strive to achieve an up-close-and-personal authentic feel, Mackenzie ensures that the dialogue is riddled with real London colloquialisms. Anyone living north of the Watford gap in England may have to rewind and double-back when watching Starred Up – so don’t feel alienated by the film’s heavy southern slang. The real power of the film lies not in the dialogue, but in the emotion that trembles underneath and bursts into life at explosive intervals.

As a prison movie, it remains one of the best ever, and Starred Up comes as highly recommended as any piece of cinema to emerge from Britain in the last few years.

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