Rise Of The Footsoldier DVD > Reviews > Fall of the Filmmaker

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Hated it
Story	Very weak
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Weak
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	It ends .
Disadvantages:	The dreadful quality of acting, direction, writing and cinematography .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Football hooligan turned minor gangster, Carlton Leach was one of the most feared figures in the Essex underworld during the 80s and early 90s. His rise through the ranks began as a member of the notorious Inter City Firm of football thugs. He then graduated to running some of the most dangerous crews of bouncers to blight the late 80s club scene before getting involved in the supply of drugs to the ravers of the early 90s. But the violence would soon spiral out of control, leading to a drug war, a series of revenge killings and the infamous Rettenden murders.

On seeing this movie, I assumed it was director-writer Julian Gilbey's first, but I was wrong. He's already helmed two other full-length features, which fails to explain the appalling quality of this offering. The production values are at rock bottom; the result being that you'll probably remember the dodgy wigs and even dodgier acting above all else. It opens with the epithet "Based on a true story", which is never a good sign - it usually means that the content is so ludicrous you wouldn't believe it otherwise. Here it's used to give some credence to the most clichéd mockney gangster flick to have appeared for some time. I suppose it's appropriate that Gilbey throws every hackneyed device at the screen. He attempts to give the movie a gritty look by using greyed-out film, but it looks more like there's been a mistake in the processing than a distinct attempt at style. He uses a first-person voice-over narration that only underlines the lack of narrative cohesion of the often seemingly random scenes we are presented with. His use of contemporaneous news footage feels like a cheap way of avoiding recreating the scenes. Both the past and imagined scenes are shot in grainy cine-film, causing confusion over what is reality. There are lots of montages of apparently random images filtered with various colours that, along with the gratuitous sex, violence and nudity seem engineered to distract from the lack of narrative. So it's a shame they aren't better accomplished. The violence in particular may be nasty and brutal but it is badly choreographed and lacks realism because every blow is accompanied by the same noise of knuckles on flesh and some of them clearly don't make contact. Gilbey has no idea how to handle actors, resulting in a series of one-dimensional gangster stereotypes talking in flat monotones and failing to connect with their characters and the audience. The overwhelming impression is of a shoddily made for DVD release that got lucky and gained big-screen distribution.

The screenplay by Gilbey and his brother Will lacks any insight into the lives of the real-life characters they are writing about. The film is badly titled for a start, as the longer the movie goes on, the less involved the central character is. So it's not as if he rises to the pinnacle of the gangster underworld. He seems to plateau with his entrance into the sale of ecstasy in the early 90s. The Gilbeys aren't brave enough to assume an opinion on the main character or his actions. Presumably they're too scared of the real Carlton Leach to portray him as a real head-case, but don't know enough about writing to make him sympathetic in any measure. They pussyfoot around the issue of who killed three of the main members of the gang at Rettenden, giving us three possible scenarios, but never having the bottle to point the finger conclusively. This leaves the audience without the necessary catharsis at the finale of the movie.

Carlton's relationships with the key gang members are never sufficiently explained. So it comes as something of a surprise when he starts crying over their deaths at the end. All you know about any of the infamous Essex Boys gang is that they like fighting, drugs and women they can treat as hookers. The characterisation is supremely lacking in depth - every bloke in the movie is a hard-man cliché with no redeeming features. I was appalled by the portrayal of women, who are all either trophy wives, junkies or prostitutes (or some combination of the three). Even if this is how the modern gangster treats the opposite sex, the writers could at least have gone to the trouble of giving them personalities. The pacing stutters throughout because the writers have so little knowledge of their subject. There's very little detail, so the hundred and nineteen-minute running time is excessive and makes the whole endeavour feel flabby. The dialogue is, well, dire. The Gilbeys have no idea how to write authentic-sounding speech and the excess of threats and expletives in the minimal speech shows an absence of imagination on their part.

To refer to Ricci Harnett, who plays Carlton Leach, as an actor would be an insult to those that have spent years honing their craft and talent in pursuit of naturalistic, believable performances. To say he is wooden would be a disservice to trees. He's an expressionless charisma vacuum, who spends most of the movie with a scowl on his face that makes him appear constipated. He speaks in a flat monotone that makes the voice-over narration tedious to listen to. He doesn't even have the right physicality to convince as a man pumped up on steroids.

As psychotic coke-hoover Pat Tate, ex-"London's Burning" star Craig Fairbrass substitutes shouting and staring for menace. It's patently obvious from his physicality that he's going to start on anyone that comes near him, but his violent streak is illustrated with almost comic book excess. But at least he has his own hair, unlike Terry Stone, who plays Tony Tucker. He has the misfortune of looking like he has part of an orang-utan stuck to his head, which is somewhat distracting. Sadly it's not enough to divert attention from his stock wide-boy performance. The rest of the supporting cast appears to have been culled from "Eastenders" rejects, who are obviously hard up for work if they're willing to do this kind of tripe.

There is no reference to a composer for the music for the movie, which suggests that all the tracks have been culled from stock music libraries. That would explain some of the ill-fitting choices such as the opening arrangement of jangling harpsichord, thin strings and watery chimes. There are also bland segments of twanging acoustic guitar when Carlton's first wife leaves him and cacophonous percussion and electric guitar that accompany torture scenes. These are juxtaposed with a bewildering array of poodle rock, punk, house and commercial dance music, which show how the times are changing throughout the film, but don't gel as a body of work.

"Rise of the Footsoldier" is a classic example of sloppy filmmaking. The director attempts a style over substance approach but doesn't have enough decent tricks or strong enough production values for this to work. The writing is poor, lacking depth, insight and talent. The same can be said of the performances that boil down to the "actors" hitting their marks and saying their lines, but without any understanding of the characters. Films like this are the reason the British movie industry is perceived to be on its uppers. It proves why sex and violence aren't the only necessary ingredients for a successful gangster movie. It also shows that producers have more money than sense when it comes to finance. My advice to them would be to follow the talent instead of waiting for the desperate to show up with a begging bowl. Don't waste your time or your money on this execrable pile of crap.