Bullet Boy

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, 2004, 89 min
Section: Focus on British Film (2000-2005)

Synopsis

Documentary-maker Saul Dibb and his co-scriptwriter Catherine R. Johnson, a former writer-in-residence at London’s Holloway Women’s Prison, bring an authentic edge to gritty drama Bullet Boy. Ashley Walters, who in real life served seven months at an offenders’ institute for gun possession, plays Ricky, 19, who is determined not to fall back into destructive patterns having returned fresh from custody to his home in east London’s Hackney. But when his best friend Wisdom hands him a gun and draws him into a conflict with some local youths, a break with the past looks an ever more dim prospect. His long-suffering mum despairs for his future, and is determined that her impressionable 12-year-old son Curtis (non-professional actor Luke Fraser) follow a different path to Ricky. Strong performances and authentic dialogue elevate this tragedy-tinged drama about machismo, gun crime and the impoverished black London experience.

About the director

Saul Dibb (b. 1968, London) followed in the footsteps of his father, TV documentary filmmaker Mike Dibb, carving out his own reputation with factual films tackling gritty, controversial subjects: shoplifters (Lifters), life on the streets of inner-city London (Electric Avenue), a porn actress and her manager-partner (Easy Money), and a notorious British Islamic fundamentalist (Tottenham Ayatollah). Dibb followed Bullet Boy, his debut feature, with the three-part TV series The Line of Beauty, adapted from Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, in which the worlds of gay hedonism and the Conservative establishment collide in Thatcher-era west London.