Shank (2010)

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely the worst movie.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

What made me watch 'Shank' was its concept. Found it to be a brilliant one, of my recent film viewings the concept here was one of the better and most interesting ones, and executed right 'Shank' had potential to be a halfway decent film. There was a potentially decent story and film in 'Shank', sadly neither come out in a film where it was actually very difficult to find many good things with so much done badly wrong. This is coming from somebody who actually wanted to like the film, not going in expecting to hate it. Some nice atmospheric colours here and there, hence why the rating is not a 1/10, but that is pretty much the only thing in the film that wasn't less than bad, everything else is bad to disastrous. Rest of the production values are just awful, with particularly nauseating photography made even by choppy editing.Music is over-bearing and some of the placement is very random, coming out of nowhere for the sake of it regardless of whether it fit or not. The script throughout is stilted, confused and lacking plausibility, while the story suffers from a chaotic structure and useless overlong padding which makes the pacing painfully erratic on both extremes of rushed and dull. No suspense or intrigue whatsoever and there is nothing to be emotionally invested by, which makes the lead character's plight impossible to identify with.Direction is barely competent, with a far from slick visual style, no sense of drama or urgency and a complete confused mess in tone. The action is poorly filmed and edited and never exciting, instead too loud, very clumsy and too much. Didn't mind so much that the characters were clichés, did mind that they were bland and obnoxious stereotypes with no development let alone depth. The acting is poor and less, the film even bringing the worst out of Colin Salmon.In conclusion, very bad but have seen worse. 2/10 Bethany Cox

From the upstart, this film does not know what it wants to be.In one instant, it tries to be a Noel Clarke 'ghetto' type movie, and in the next, it wants to be some steam punk movie from the eighties.It fails on every level, but it demands to be watched until the very end, because of its random set pieces, and really uncomfortable comedy.Set in the future, or five tears away, there is a shortage of food, and people now freerun or ride bikes for transport.Rich people still eat sandwiches, but hey, this film is aimed at the white collar wearing sun readers of the future, and this is another chink in its armour, it doesn't know how to treat the demographic its aiming at.So instead of sending out a message, it treats us to everyone's favourite screen hoodie Adam Deacon vomiting and talking the lingo he does in every. Single. Film. He's. In.there's a random CGI segment thrown in, and an animated segment to try and make it a little more cool, but again, it fails.The film has tried too hard to be something different, and this is destined to become obscure very, very soon.

I began this film with high expectations, thinking it would send out a moral message about drugs, crime and gang culture. But somehow this film ,even though it is supposed to send this message, fails and actually makes gang life look great.The filming is awful every scene starts with some ridiculous 'where the hell and what the hell is going on' filming and terrible music. I didn't pay £7.50 to see the camera shaken this much.Normally I don't mind swearing, but this film is actually worse than This Is England or 28 Days later. Every sentence is met with a 'F**k. I wouldn't care if the film was any good! The plot is just appalling, the most blatant plot and blatant ending, this film is trying to be groundbreaking, but unfortunately it's groundbreaking rubbish.There are so many pointless scenes of people smashing each others heads in and pointless sex scenes. The acting is terrible! One of the big cheeses actually sounds unbelievably fake I laughed.This film is laughable and just rubbish, the only good thing is the picture quality. Thats it though!!!

British film is going down the pan, unless you're one of the few lucky Brits who get millions to play with like Ridley Scott or Neil marshall. All we ever seem to get are British gangster movies and they're always utter s##t, does no one have any other ideas?.This one in particular was the worst god damn thing iv ever wasted 20 min of my life on, i know team America said every film needs a montage but do you really need one every 5 min? i felt like i was watching MTV base......i was just waiting for that dizzy rascal guy to jump out and spin a rented medallion into the camera. I have no idea if this film got any better and frankly i don't care, every copy should be recalled and burned and anyone who actually spent money on this should get it back, unfortunately we cant get our lives back.If you have any sense at all you will put this back on the shelf and walk away and spread the word.