Twenty Four Seven

Great Britain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages:o English (Dolby Digital 2.0) Synopsis:In a typical English working-class town, the juveniles have nothing more to do than hang around in gangs. One day, Alan Darcy, a highly motivated man with the same kind of youth experience, starts trying to get the young people off the street and into doing something they can believe in: Boxing. Soon he opens a training facility which is accepted gratefully by them and the gangs start to grow together into friends. Darcy manages to organize a public fight for them to prove what they have learned. A training camp with hiking tours into the mountains of Wales forge the group into a tight-knit club society. With the day of the fight drawing closer, the young boxers get more and more excited.-Shane Meadows's film absolutely shines with authenticity, in large part because of a well-written, gritty script penned by Meadows and Paul Fraser. As usual Bob Hoskins turns in a performance that allows the audience to feel both compassion and a certain sensitivity towards his character; though he is a rough-and-tumble sort, Hoskins also communicates his more humorous and sweet-natured side. His ex-gang member is a fitting protagonist for a film that weaves a tale of pride and determination, and of changing one's circumstances through sport. Although we get a taste of Catholic/Protestant tensions, the film doesn't dwell on religious persecution, focusing instead on the sheer boredom and dire prospects that lead Northern youths to gangs and violence. This is not a new story, and the acting -- aside from that of Hoskins, who dominates the film as its only recognizable actor -- is unspectacular. However, what is important is Twentyfourseven's ability to convey an environment of hopelessness and recurring neglect, which it does in spades. Product Description

Promising

Twenty Four Seven is the kind of debut that gets hailed as promising, which is another way of saying the director clearly has talent but doesn't know what to do with it yet. Certainly compared to most of the substandard product in the UK over the past decade it's a cut above, but there's not much substance to its tale of Bob Hoskins' attempts to regain some self-respect and keep various teenagers out of trouble by starting a boxing club. For all the naturalism, there's not enough character to carry it over into tragedy when the feelgood factor takes an unexpected turn in the final third, one it sadly fails to exploit or investigate. Ironically, director Shane Meadows' subsequent film, A Room for Romeo Brass would have the opposite problem, delivering a brilliantly realized character in a thin plot before he would finally deliver the goods with Dead Man's Shoes. Very watchable and not without its incidental pleasures nonetheless, the DVD includes an amiably down to Earth commentary by Meadows and writer Paul Fraser and the original trailer.

Also included on the UK PAL DVD, 9-minute short film Three Tears for Jimmy Prophet isn't particularly memorable as a piece of filmmaking, but it's another impressive bit of corroborating evidence for the theory that Paddy Considine is the best British actor of his generation. There's nothing outstandingly original in the writing, but there's real emotional truth in his performance as a small-time boxer whose life has taken a turn for the tragic.
October 16, 2006

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