Review of Neds (2007) by Susie L — 21 Sep 2016

Scottish film seems to be trying to prove itself with this one. 'Scottish version of This is England' is commonly used to portray this film, but I disagree, while its set some years earlier and the skin head generation is not quite at its peak yet. Although, everyone is still knocking about in Doc Martins and rolled jeans, which is slightly early for its time.

The film starts with a chubby swotty lad named John whose first place in his primary seven class. After being threatened by an older boy from the boys high school, he seeks help from his older brother Benny to sort it out for him. Benny plays the generic hard man big brother whose gone off the rails, we've seen it all before.

John is put into a low ability class and he's furious. As time goes on things spiral out of control and John starts to become a violent, nasty piece of work. I think you're suppose to feel sorry for Johns character and some points, but once you watch the film and see his behaviour to other characters, you begin to dislike him.

You feel sorry for Johns little sister and Mother, but not enough. The director has failed to show the true emotional damage that would occur to a family in that particularly violent environment.

NEDS is overall filmed well, and I personally enjoyed it but it could have been so much better. There wasn't a lot of fancy, up to date film work, just standard cinematography. This film could have done with a little bit of TLC, even on a low budget, creativity costs nothing.