It depends. If someone REALLY likes dismembering living things, whether they want to be dismembered or not, and you find them a job where they can get most of that out of their system legally, have they been redeemed, or just had their evil redirected?

This is very true, I knew a few troublemakers growing up who wouldn't say 'boo' to anyone now. Myself included. I never mugged anyone or dealt drugs but I wasn't a particularly nice teenager, I was kind of violent (bullying tends to do that to you). Now, though, I consider myself to be a decent human being. I live next door to an ex drug addict who beat me up years ago for looking at him funny. We're good mates now who look out for the older folk in the street (he does shopping for them and mows their lawns). I'm also friends with someone who used to bully me at school, he does anti-bullying talks to kids at schools on occasion. And he's a bloody nice dude with two sweet kids.

This 'people don't change' attitude pisses me off. I know it not to be true.

Oh yeah, killed some of those ET motherufckers and became a hero! Who wouldn't love that?

In all seriousness, I know someone who will likely turn down a psychopathic road as they grow up and it is difficult to watch, knowing that some how, some way, their destructiveness and violence can be redirected, but for the life of you, you don't know how.

My boss commented that Dexter was an interesting answer to that question. While not necessarily a redemption of the character, it is interesting way to channel that evil. It doesn't necessarily change the person, but sublimates those darker impulses in a different path. The person is still the same evil, just acceptable, in some bizarre way...

It is one way that "Attack the Block" sort of works with the ending because it isn't that the kids are irredeemable, but we, the audience, do not see the redemption. We just see the potential. They are good but can have good intentions.

Interesting psychology here...

To clarify, I think your first 8 minutes should establish who your main character is, an idea of why they're that way, and a sense of what kind of journey they're going to go on.  This is not to be confused with the need for a major set piece or bit of mayhem. Your first 8 minutes can be pretty uneventful and still accomplish this.  The first 8 of Officer and a Gentleman, relatively little happens.  It's Richard Gere waking up from a Hooker binge with his dad and a couple flashbacks to childhood.  You don't even meet Louis Gossett Jr.  But it gives you what you need about Mayo as a character and what he's in for.  Shit, even ENTER THE VOID accomplishes the same thing.

Last edited by Eddie (2013-09-05 16:54:33)

On first read I thought you meant Touching the Void, which I liked just fine.  But never mind that now.

So I checked out the trailer for this other Void and... hmmm.   I may give that one a go someday but I'm not exactly motivated to, if'n ya know what I mean.

Just reading the summary on Wikipedia, I gave up when it said a Tokyo police officer shoots a white guy in the chest for dealing drugs. That's so ridiculous, it's beyond words.

As for Attack the Block, it's another film I'd never heard of and never would've seen if not for you guys. Going into it blind was rather nice, and as Mike mentioned, the movie keeps defying your expectations. I found it to be a fun ride from beginning to end.

But from very early on, I could see the problem the filmmakers set up for themselves by starting from Sam's POV during the mugging and then switching to the kids' POV from the rest of the night. We're given a strong negative impression right from the start, but the movie doesn't have the time to reconcile their villainous actions with their heroic actions. In fact, they almost seem like different characters. All attempts to make them seem like decent people are half-hearted, and the movie is relying on the goodwill of the audience to handwave the rest.

But really, there's no need for them to be villains, at all. For one thing, most poor kids don't mug people, and having a group of streetwise teenagers would've been enough to sell the movie's premise.

A group of kids is heading home after some Guy Fawkes night revelry. The meteorite crashes and destroys Brewis's car. Moses decides to take advantage of the situation. Sam, on her way home, comes across the kids surrounding the destroyed car and runs off to call the police. The female alien attacks Moses, he and the rest of the kids chase after it, and kill it. From there the movie can progress essentially as is. No need to make your protagonists unlikable assholes.

The point of the film is that the aliens land in a bad London neighborhood. The neighborhood is saved by people most Britons don't like. At the beginning of the film, Moses is on his way to becoming like Hi-Hatz. By the end, he is a hero.

To be fair to you, the film makers would probably soften that opening if they had it to do over again. In the commentary, Cornish says he imagines this is the first mugging these kids try, but the script clearly has them saying that they've done this before; Moses "always picks poor people" to rob.

Last edited by Zarban (2013-09-08 16:31:22)

I think that without having knowledge of the sort of tenants that often makeup of a block of council flats, it's probably difficult to relate to the characters or their actions. Rioting is a thing, etc.

Unlikable protagonists which don't engender sympathy is probably a pretty accurate stereotype of these kids.