Gassed Up

Gassed Up

WHY do we keep giving any air time to this type of scutter life mentality and act like we should care if a single one of the characters does anything but wind up in a gutter or dead. The storyline is Drama school level predictable with possibly the worst overacting you'll witness outside of WWE. The main character casting is so bad it's almost comical and you're rooting for him to get finished off in every exchange that happens which I assume is the opposite of what they were aiming for and the same goes for the equally unlikable side characters - although they at least dont freak out like a school girl at every turn of a corner. Over egged 'waste man' style scripting is painful to have to sit through and if anyone talks like that in real life then I'd be questioning how many times they've bounced their head off a toilet seat while trying to pull up their pants half way up their legs before shuffling back off to "tell fam bout da stink in da poop room init' Unless you're trying to learn how to not act or how to stereotype a race of people so badly that you'd be ashamed to watch them if they were your own family then I'd give this one a wider birth than you'd give StankPants as he leaves the toilet ..... Ya Get Me Fam Ting Init Bruv.

Where to start with this shambles of a film, ok let's be fair and say that they tried and this is why I am stretching as far as 3 stars for this disaster, Too many no no's in this film from the ridiculous 5mph scooter drag races, the white youth talking like yardies with poor conviction, the awful attempt of battling like 8 mile and the characters in general are hard to get involved with. Ash is the main character if there is one at all, and this film fails to get you rooting for him, he has a motive for all his wrongdoings, but you fail to really get the 2 connected, I am not sure if this is due to a actor although fairly ok is out of his depth in a lead role or if the writing was not good enough, It feels like the writers have seen the success of TopBoy and thought hey I can do that, sadly they have failed. Let's wrap this up and say, if you like me am struggling to find something to watch then give it a go, but keep your expectations low and you won't be disappointed.

First up, this film was glamorising street crime in the way Top Boy, Adulthood et al did, but way late in the day; I was hoping this was a faded trend because this has been done over and over (the formulaic random kids in a street gang that swear too much and the Russian crime lords all set in the mean / clean streets of London #yawn) Classics like 'The Harder They Come', where a protagonist makes a living through struggle by turning to crime, but karma gets back at him for his earlier actions are leaps and bounds over these types of dramas; you know why. Because they have an actual ability to portray a human's struggle not just mix together protagonists that could literally exist the whole production in balaclavas, vapid performances made relevant by young people speaking the mumble slang of modern Britain. I despise how a company the size of Amazon just pushes a trend. If any of the film crew were swamped by petty criminals on mopeds, they might have reconsidered the lame nature of trying to glamourize real-time criminality to gain social hits in this awful era of media creation. This production was a childlike CBBC life drama made to help children try and gain an understanding of the modern world, but with the type of language that makes me think a writer asked Chat GPT to make an hour-long migraine of dialogue using as many swear words and brinkmanship of Stormzy's raw lyrics as it could. Well done all around on style, lovely lighting and whatnot, wardrobe good, cast.. whatever, dialogue.. dry. Just stop watching this stuff, guys; let the algorithms get to work on some classics again.

Anyone who manages to get to the end, your patience is that of a saint!! The acting in this isn't what's at fault here, but the storyline and the plot holes of each character is what is. A motley crew of phone thieves on mopeds who you can't feel sorry for or even root for due to the catalogue of bad decisions. The lead who is just not ready for this role has presence but not quite enough charisma to pull this off has a lot on his plate but doesn't build enough rapport with the audience to actually give 2 hoots about. As it's a urban movie, so there's a lot of mandem, innit, bruvs and sub par dialogue which detracts from this movie a lot and doesn't build up any more dimension to this genre and plot holes galore as main characters abruptly dissapear with just a mere mention in the next scene is a little bit jarring. It's a movie that's thrown together with little to no pacing and this just doesn't give the crescendo that the audience deserves. You neither feel happy nor fulfilled at the end for the main character. Can't work out whether he needed to fail for his bad choices or walk away the winner or beat the antagonists at their own game. Had the potential to be a a lot better but the director fumbled it and the actors all apart from Zazz the Albanian ringleader who has screen presence. The main actor could do with having a bit more range if he's to hit that A lists. I like urban movies and wanted to really like this movie. "One day" is still the film to beat in this Genre Mizu Rahman.

I'm a Londoner and have grown up in the east end. Growing up I knew teenagers into petty crime, and even some small time gangsters like those shown in the film. Gassed Up is a sort of believable portrait of that kind of culture in London, in the 2020s. Honestly the depiction of London "Ghetto Culture" in this film is probably fairly close to reality, and in that respect the movie gets this aspect kind of right - London youth culture - but not 100% right, and it's not quite as believable as it would like to be. Apart from that it's a fairly decent anti-crime film with a good message about not taking the wrong path. The story is interesting and watchable and the characters likeable enough to keep me watching. Not a perfect film by far, but not a bad one either. Check it out if you're interested in London gang culture. But don't take it too seriously.

Where do you even begin with this codswallop produced by Amazon? Not one interaction between any of the characters, no matter how big or small had an ounce realism. Everything was so unnatural that you might wonder if this group of supposed actors weren't just caught in a giant butterfly net on a London estate and instructed to speak a load of cringeworthy nonsense to one another in front of a camera. No one comes out of this with any credit. If you've seen one chav movie, you've seen them all. Tune in for a laugh but do be warned; viewing this drivel for any longer than 60 seconds could cause brain damage. Know what I'm sayin' fam?

"Ash" (Stephen Odubola) lives at home with his young sister and his permanently absent or stoned mother. His dream is to start a business of his own (he likes to fix things) and to get her into rehab. To that end he's mixed up with four of his mates in a snatch 'n grab scheme using mopeds to pinch mobile phones and handbags from unsuspecting folks on the street. They sell these on to "Shaz" (Jelena Gavrilovic) who happens to be the cousin of the gang's leader "Dubz" (Taz Skylar). "Ash" finds the shoebox under his bed is gradually filling up, but when he's told his mother's medical costs are likely to run to £25,000 he realises that nicking a few phones ain't going cut it. After a raid to get themselves some new transport goes awry, with one of their number a bit too handy with the spray-on acid, they are reduced to four and given a new task. Rob a jewellery store and make some proper money. When this goes tragically wrong, "Ash" and his pals "Kabz" (Mohammed Mansaray) and "Mole" (Tobias Jowett) have to persuade their briefly ostracised mate "Roach" (Craige Middleburg) to come back and help them - because their paymasters are still demanding a sackful of loot! Up until this point, the film is actually quite decent - a diverse group of life-long mates all carrying out what they reckon are victimless crimes to make some cash. Once the violent elements kick in, though, the plot really heads south. What made it a bit different is subsumed into a rather amateurishly directed affair with implausible police chases, even more unlikely robbery scenarios and just one chunk too much of bad decision making - on and off the screen. Skylar is a man with charisma, but the rest of these characters never light up the screen or the story and by the sequel-suggesting conclusion, I'd sort of lost interest. It is worth a watch with all the "life's there for the taking" stuff going on, but it'll be on the television soon enough and I'm sure it can wait til then.

Most certainly not perfect, I'm not convinced by it I won't lie, but... 'Gassed Up' narrowly does enough. Making your lead characters criminals is always a brave choice, you're almost setting yourself up for failure from a film point of view. I'm personally cool with a movie's main lot not being total good guys, like 'The Fast and the Furious' is literally one of my favourite flicks ever, but it does make it more difficult to root for the people onscreen. In this execution of making the audience do the aforementioned, I think this film doesn't do the best job. I appreciate the backstory we get for them, well at least for a few of them, and it does work in making you understand their point of views. However, I'm just not sure if it's enough to overcome what the characters are actually doing; it's not like they are Robin Hoods... well, I guess they actually are robin hoods (ha! Get it! Sorry!) but you get what I mean. There's also an inconsistency in that they avoid going up a level in their activities as they know it'll bring more heat - yet not long after stating that they brazenly take it up a notch anyway. A possible 'out' is they are blinded by wonga but that's unconvincing. All this is just me saying that the writing isn't the best, in my opinion of course. What does save this is that the feel of the film is competent, it's fairly well put together and moves along at a decent pace. The cast are also positives, with Stephen Odubola being the clear standout as Ash. Taz Skylar and Mohammed Mansaray are alright, though Craige Middleburg and Mae Muller (strange casting for the latter) are more miss than hit. I would've liked Steve Toussaint to have been used more. Glad I watched this at the cinema though, always nice to support productions from the homeland. Two groups of two were in there with me, though one duo did decide to leave with a good chunk of the movie left; I see other reviewers have noted likewise - ouch! I can possibly see why if I'm totally truthful, but for me I just about got enough out of it. I could easily be rating this a step lower, though.