(prospectmagazine.co.uk)
The film is based in Glasgow during the 1970's where we meet a young boy by the name John McGill. He begins as an impressionable youngster who is class swot and lives under the shadow of his older, gang-leader brother and his abusive, alcoholic father.
It does not take long for this young boy to fall in with the wrong crowd, and he soon becomes involved in the 'ned' culture. He turns his back on education and family for a life terrorizing the community and being a threat to all those around him. His fiery temper seems to stem from a suppressive childhood where he has always had to dumb himself down to be accepted and had to endure his father beating his mother senseless every night without being able to stop it.
McGill ends up being more of a thug than the rest of the gang are willing to participate in, so he is out of the gang and is left to wallow in his own self-pity and anguish. This soon turns into rage.
His anger reaches a pinnacle when he decides to enact the same violence upon his father that he had done to his mother, it is not his first taste of blood and will certainly not be his last. In the film you can almost see his sanity unwinding, unravelling and this comes to a head when he is seen strapping knifes to his hands and going to look for a fight with a rival gang.
This fight is almost his last and prompts him to go back to school. He is put in a lower class with a boy he violently assaulted and left brain damaged. You can see the hurt in his expression at this point and it marks a change in his life for sure.
Peter Mullan's interpretation of life in a gang in 70's Glasgow is gritty and overstated. The violence in it is so raw it seems to be unreal. Almost makes you glad the common 'Neds' we see and know today are a little more subdued than their counterparts.
No comments:
Post a Comment