Bullet hits the target

This is a story about young blacks that has often been told before - Boyz 'n The Hood, for instance. But the important point about Bullet Boy is that it's a different turning for the British cinema. If it has faults, and it has, there's a reason to forgive them.

A young man comes out of a young offenders' institution and heads home for Hackney. His decent, law-abiding mother has a homecoming celebration waiting for him but he muffs the chance to put the past behind him.

Egged on by dubious friends, he gets involved in a street confrontation with a local rude boy that results in tit-for-tat revenge. The violence escalates and eventually there's no going back. A gun decides the issue.

Saul Dibb's first feature has drawn worried comments from the local community within which it was filmed. Not all black Britishers are like this, not even those who live on sink estates in Hackney. But everyone living in this sort of area knows that drugs and guns are part of life, and the film tells the truth about that.

It does so with some force, though the dialogue is sometimes indecipherable and the film-making relies too much on agitated closeups. But the acting is fine - none better than Claire Perkins's performance as the boy's desperately anxious mother.

The boy is played by Ashley Walters (So Solid Crew) with Leon Black as his best friend, each portrayal having the ring of authenticity. Does the film tell us anything new? Probably not. But it does drum home the message that it's not so easy to go straight when peer-group pressures decide otherwise; and that the struggle between the younger generation of black Britons and their parents in an often unfriendly society can leave terrible marks on both.

Bullet Boy is showing at the London Film Festival on Friday at the Ritzy in Brixton and on Saturday at the Rio in Dalston.

Bullet Boy
Cert: 15