Attack the Block

This is going to be a short review. I saw this movie a few days back, and honestly it didn't raise enough thoughts in my to make a full-length review, which is why I've been considering skipping it entirely. I'll just say what little I have to say.

Attack the Block is a British comedy film about a bunch of teenaged South London gansta-wannabies. It's Guy Fawkes Night, and the kids' robbery of a bypasser is interrupted by an alien invasion. The movie balances between developing the characters, having them chased around by monsters and having them deliver pretty well-written humour.

The film's greatest triumph is that it takes character types who are normally very, very, very annoying and makes the audience like them. Or at least the attempt worked on me. The accents, the attitudes, the actions, all of it is the sort of stuff I normally loathe in a film. At first, the boys seem like they've escaped out of Michael Bay's secret Transformers In London project, but in the end they earn their status as protagonists. The performances aren't anything too special, but they're fine. Nick Frost appears as a drug dealer, but honestly he's not that special without his best buddy Simon Pegg to play off of.

The aliens are designed interestingly, with a very minimalistic look aside from one visual detail that is used effectively in the cinematography. The action scenes get a bit too hectic at times, but for the most part they're fine. The climax of the movie is surprisingly tense, if a bit pretentious in its attempt to ethically redeem the main gangmember.

I liked it okay. It's an above-average alien-invasion spoof. Unfortunately, the distribution for it is kinda screwed up, so at some markets it may already have passed. Give it a watch if you've got the chance.