Yardie
Dir: Idris Elba
2018
***
Idris Elba’s directional debut is an original and enjoyable crime drama but it isn’t without its faults. It tells the story of a young Jamaican child called Dennis (who goes by the nickname ‘D’) who grows up in Kingston Town in the early ‘70s. Life is dangerous as the town is divided by two violent rival gangs, and when a schoolgirl is shot dead in a daylight shootout, D’s older brother Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary) steps up and tries to bring peace to the suburb by putting on a free dance. With the dance in full swing, Jerry asks the leaders of each gang to the stage to shake hands and declare peace. However, a young boy shoots Jerry from the crowd and kills him. Gang leader King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd) takes young D under his wing but the incident has a devastating effect on the boy. Years later the gang war is over as King Fox’s rivals are either killed or disperse. Fox opens a recording studio and D, who is now a man (Aml Ameen) delivers packages and runs errands for him. When the music drys up, King Fox moves to cocaine and gets D to work with him on a big deal but things go wrong when D discovers that one of the rival gang members from back in the day when his brother got shot is working for King’s drug contact. D confronts the man and beats him senseless. King Fox, angered by D’s actions, decides to send D to London to deliver a package of cocaine to his contact there and to lay low for a while as his presence is now a liability in Kingston. He is ordered to deliver the cocaine to nightclub owner Rico (Stephen Graham) but after an uneasy first meeting, D runs away with the intention to sell the drugs to someone else. A soundclash crew of three youths overhear of the events and try to steal the drugs from D but they are naive and D sees right through them. The four work together and find a Turkish dealer and they soon make money and get a rig together. Rico soon finds them and his gang use D’s girlfriend and child – who moved to London a few years before – as emotional leverage. Things get even more complicated when D learns that the boy who shot his brother is living in London and has a child in the same class as his daughter. When things look as if they’re about to get out of hand, King Fox himself travels to London and events take a turn for the worse. The direction itself is brilliant and Idris Elba has clearly got a good eye for composition. It was nice to see so many wide shots used in inside scenes. There is one scene, that isn’t particularly important to the story, where two characters talk from opposite sides of a kitchen. The shot is huge but it really invited the audience into the picture and made them part of it. The story is set in 1983, and is visually convincing, but the wide shots make it so there cannot be any mistakes and there aren’t any – the attention to detail is perfect. It is shocking that there are so few films that focus on the influence of Caribbean culture – Jamaican culture in particular – in 70s and 80s England. There are a few music documentaries but that is about it. While it is a shame that the story revolves around drugs and crime, it should be noted that D’s girlfriend (Shantol Jackson in her impressive acting debut) is a nurse working for the NHS. The windrush generation – and their children’s generation - have been in the news during much of 2018 due to the scandalous behaviour of the government in subjecting them to citizenship issues. Many workers came from the Caribbean and have been part of the backbone of life and culture in the UK ever since, so Yardie’s themes come at a poor time for a people who have had a bad year of it but the NHS acknowledgment and how the Jamaicans embrace British life is thankfully present. It was also lovely as a Londoner to see suburbs like Hackney on the big screen. I think the big problem however is the development of certain characters, D in particular. His story of redemption doesn’t quite work and it is unclear whether we are supposed to like him or loathe him. Stephen Graham’s performance as Rico is also a strange one. It is meant to be a serious film but Graham’s performance is cartoonish and funny, when it should have been a little more menacing. I really liked Graham’s performance and character (he actually does have some Jamaican in him and grew up in a largely Jamaican community) but it didn’t quite work with the main story. I do wish they had explored the story of the young boy who shot Jerry, as this transpired to be a far more interesting development than anything D had gone through. The performances are either brilliant or amateur, although pretty much everyone is likable. Likability is what makes Yardie work, that and the captivating music. It is a great film but it could have been greater but I don’t think Elba is at all to blame. The screenplay doesn’t quite work and neither does the editing but the direction, I think, is flawless and Aml Ameen, Everaldo Creary, Sheldon Shepherd and Shantol Jackson's performances are fantastic. I have read criticism of the film due to its rich use of patwah but I think that is ridiculous as it makes the film authentic and it really isn't that hard to understand at all.