Review of Neds (2010) by Luke W — 05 Feb 2012

With its informative and convincingly bleak portrait of working-class 1970s Glasgow, Neds will certainly attract comparisons with This Is England. Neds perhaps provides a little more in its incisive depiction of its central character, John McGill, testing viewer empathy to its full as he grows from a frightened schoolboy full of academic potential, into a capable violent young man, with a wit as sharp as the knives taped into his fists; Marcus is indeed in the garden.

Unfortunately, despite being a well-written, well-acted and intriguing study of intellectual ability struggling to shine through an adolescent embrace of antisocial behaviour, it is hard to see what else Neds achieves. To its credit, Neds does not clutch onto the hackneyed political commentary that usually saturates films of this type. Yet the plot does not develop into its fullest expression. The ending, despite the superbly dynamic closing scene where John leads a bully he has vengefully disabled through the lion enclosure, is fruitlessly vague and leaves the viewer without any conclusions. Fans of cinematic realism will appreciate this; I expected closure for a character that I'd been forced to invest so much into.

A testament to director Peter Mullan's cinematic ability on a clearly limited budget, Neds is a compelling and watchable drama, but falls short of anything classic.