Empire State
Dir: Ron Peck
1987
****
A brilliant and largely forgotten slice of East End life in the latter half of the 1980's. Pretty much everything we see in the film has now been redeveloped or knocked down, is unfashionable and has disappeared, from the clothes, to the way people speak, the buildings and the way of life. Above everything, it's is a precious document of a time, a place and a consciousness explored through a series of interweaving vignettes. The idea of the old making way for the new, the redevelopment of the East End of London and the attitude of those with the power and the money has all come true. There is a scene whereby a model is presented of a financial, retail and residential development that is extremely similar to the one that stands in Canary Wharf today, built five years later. Ron Peck was abreast of current affairs but he predicts the future frighteningly and it's fascinating watching this film now. The club scene (pretty much the last half of the film) is one of the most realistic depictions of the 1980's in cinema, this is a real 80's film telling it how it was. I'm puzzled as to why this film has been so overlooked as it is a cracking crime drama and documents one of the biggest social shifts of our time.