ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies.

MUSIC STARS rarely make the grade as actors. Even the semi-successful ones like Sting and Mick Jagger have become strangers to the screen.
  
Ashley Walters might just be the exception. The former Asher D of So Solid Crew, Walters makes an impressive screen debut in ‘Bullet Boy’, revealing a presence and talent that could secure him a lasting career.
  
The film itself is a sincere but predictable account of a young black man’s attempt to escape a culture of guns and violence. Released from prison, 20 year-old Ricky (Walters) is determined that his life must change. He wants something better even if that means abandoning his family home in East London.
 
Girlfriend Shea (Sharea-Mounira Samuels) is willing to make a fresh start with him. Torn between loyalty to his friends and his own naive hopes, Ricky’s life assumes the doomed inevitability of a Greek tragedy especially when a gun comes into his possession.
  
Covering ground that has already been exhaustively explored by Hollywood films like ‘Boyz ’n The Hood’, ‘Bullet Boy’ tells a story that has grown stale through repetition. Despite the modern trappings this is a morality lesson as old as a Jimmy Cagney Warner Brothers melodrama from the 1930s.
  
Documentary filmmaker Saul Dibb’s feature debut has a strong sense of location but lacks the freshness or depth that would have made it distinctive. Walters is very good, though, and is matched by the performance of Luke Fraser as the younger brother who idolises him and may possibly learn from his mistakes.
 
 
BULLET BOY
General release, selected cinemas
Director: Saul Dibb
Stars: Ashley Waters, Luke Fraser, Clare Perkins, Leon Black.
Screenwriter: Saul Dibb, Catherine R Johnson
Certificate: 15
Running time: 89 mins
Country: UK
Year: 2004

© Allan Hunter, 2005