John Mason loved this film but the end came too all of a sudden.surely darcy's guys would have helped him more after the beating he gave tim's dad and disappeared. love the guys and how they all gelled after being enemies. it being shot in black and white added to the sense of a drab dreary existence experienced by these lads. bob hoskins is terrific. the realism of the club's first match, in that they lost their fights and even showed obvious distress was a refreshing change from the Hollywood idea that they would overcome all and succeed first time out. it shows, as in Fagash's case that you can't go from comatose druggy to champion boxer in 24 hours. i would watch it again and again. great actors acting greatly. shane meadows is a genius. every single one of his films are infinitely watchable.

bob the moo In a deprived area of Nottingham, young men hang around on the streets in small groups, unable or unwilling to find anything beyond their very immediate horizon to aspire to. The result is petty crime, educational underachievement, drug use and endless poverty. Alan Darcy is a local himself but old enough to remember the old days, where it wasn't all like this and back when a local boxing club helped to engage the youth and engender pride in themselves and their surroundings. With sponsorship from a local "businessman", Darcy sets up the club and uses his natural charisma to win over a handful of members bit by bit. However with negativity engrained throughout the community, the fight to aspire is not an easy one.Watching Shane Meadow's most recent film (This is England) reminded me what a talent we currently have working within British cinema and it made me revisit a few of his early films that have been screened recently as part of the BBC's summer of British film. On paper this could be a typical sports movie with a group of young men finding fulfilment and meaning through sport. However this is not Hollywood, it is Nottingham and as such Meadow's opens the film with the end – a simple scenes that sets the entire film as flashback and tells us from the very start that what we are about to watch has pretty much failed. With this knowledge in the back of our minds as we then watch the rest of the film, sentiment is kept at bay.Of course the delivery generally helps this because it is gritty and convincing. The lack of hope and opportunity that forms the driver for the narrative is always present whether it is the characters or the bleak black and white cinematography and it is a real strength of the piece that it manages to do this while still retaining a sliver of hope throughout. It is hard for me to describe because I'm not that good a writer, but the mix of this comes off really well without coming over easy or simplistic. The conclusion is the closest that it comes to offering a "happy ending" but for me I took that more as people are people (hence we see mostly people individually or in small groups being OK) and that the situation is usually what makes the wider groups lack hope and aspiration.Maybe this idea appeals to my liberal politics and thus I engaged with the film more, however someone from the right could also view the film as feel affirmed by the idea that you cannot help such people because they don't want to be helped. I liked the film because it can be seen in both ways and that it isn't as black and white as the pictures – just like reality there is an element of truth from all views. Although it all comes to a dramatic head, Meadows and Fraser do well to feed in the negativity throughout in the form of certain characters and situations, while also bringing others out of themselves as Darcy manages to connect them to something. Accordingly the end of the film is also a mix of failure and success. I found it touching throughout and, although it did sometimes sail close to melodrama it never really went there and came across as realistic and convincing throughout.The cast are a big part of making this aspect of the script work. Hoskins leads the cast well with a strong performance. He does have the charisma his character needs but he also lets the strain show while also handling his own character's aspirations and frustrations well. Jones perhaps has a quite simplistic character (ie he serves a specific purpose within the narrative) but he deals with it well. The young cast are quite impressive with everyone coming off natural and convincing – something that Meadows regularly seems to be able to get from his actors. Nussbaum, Brady, Badland, Collins, Hand, Campbell and others all look like they aren't really acting for the most part, which I consider a good thing within this context. It is also worth mentioning that the soundtrack also comes over like the "12th man" of the team that is this film; plenty of great tracks and almost all of them really well used and fitted in with the film.Overall then, an impressive feature debut from Meadows and is all the better given we are not looking back at it as "his one good moment before burning out"; conversely the strengths he showed here he has kept and built on – even if the total product has not always been as good as it was here. Gritty and realistic, this film delivers hope and depression, misery and comedy, violence and humanity and remains true to its characters and environment. It is an excellent film and criminally under-seen.

Lee Eisenberg In one of many great British movies, a man (Bob Hoskins) helps working-class youths try to make something of themselves in an economically depressed town in England. It is the first time that they can ever be anything greater. But then tragedy strikes and the whole thing falls apart. The gritty "24 7: Twenty Four Seven" is no ordinary make-something-of-yourself story. The grainy black and white cinematography makes you feel like there's sandpaper rubbing against your face, and they certainly don't sugar-coat anything here. It's a movie that I recommend to everyone. Just don't expect anything "nice". A very good debut from Shane Meadows.

Chris J. If you enjoy Bob Hoskins, you'll probably find sitting through Twenty Four Seven a worthwhile experience as I did.The film isn't particularly memorable, however. It has little in it you have not seen before. There are a couple of brief moments which I found quite wonderful. But not enough to strongly recommend the film. My favorite is when Hoskins who has a crush on a young woman, sees her hand print on a counter and presses his own hand print on top of it. That I liked a lot. Unfortunately his obvious infatuation of the young lady never leads anywhere (which may be the point of course), but it's so subtle and so unrealized it barely registers. But there is that moment.It takes a long time to get involved in the film. It concerns some poor working class youths in a nowhere town in England. Everyone there seems pretty miserable. Hoskins decides to revitalize the boxing club that kept him out of trouble when he was growing up and recruits several of the town's youths half of whom are quite reluctant. When the rich father of an out of shape kid puts a little money behind the project, some additional interest in the club leads to some publicity and a match with another town's boxing club. This does not go off very well at all. That's it. There are a few well directed scenes showing the relationships of a lad to his bully father. But because we don't care very much about any of the characters in the film the impact is dulled.I can't praise the direction too highly because there are sequences that play like working class mtv videos. They would have worked at about one minute, but are allowed to continue for as long as the song lasts. The one to Van Morrisson works okay. but at nearly four minutes is too long. The others only hold together for brief amount of time before they get old. The music has more life than the images and narrative of the film and reminds us how lifeless the film really is.Still, Hoskins is at times brilliant. His talent and presence is almost enough to sustain the entire film.