Adam Peters (58%) To make yet another low budgeted cockney based crime drama is a bit like making yet another low budget zombie horror, it's something that has been done and done and done. So to stand out from the pack it really needs to be a sizeable step up from the more average entries. And I'm glad to report that this is. The first time feature film director Dexter Fletcher really has created something that shows the near impossible situation ex-cons face, and not in the more lazily way of gang intimidation to get back into a life of crime, but home and family life too. It also helps that the writing feels like something that was actually worked on rather than scribbled down on a bit of paper during shooting. While the performances are all pretty good, even if a couple of the side characters are a little underwritten. Overall a really quite solid crime drama with more than a few nice touches of comedy, a cool soundtrack, and more than a bit of heart, all set in the backdrop of a harsh London neighbourhood that's constantly changing.

poe426 WILD BILL might've been more appropriately titled DEAN'S DILEMMA; it's more about the struggle of the two abandoned sons than the wayward father. "Wild Bill" serves more as the deus ex machina than anything else: he steps in to save the day in the end, but it's too pat for my tastes- and the bar fight LOOKS like a carefully choreographed bar fight. The real star of this movie is Will Poulter as Dean, the eldest of Bill's two sons. When Dad is released from jail and delivered drunk to the flat where the two boys are squatting, he comes around and groggily wonders, "Where am I...?" Dean responds: "That's funny- been wondering the same thing for the past eight years." He doesn't want anything from his old man but his name on a form that will allow the two siblings to remain in the flat. Bill: "I felt bad about missin' your birthday." "Oh, yeah?" Dean counters: "Which one...?" When someone calls him a runaway, Dean sets her straight: "I didn't run away from home, all right? Home ran away from ME." Had the filmmakers focused more on the kids than the "father," I'd rate WILD BILL a ten. Although the ending is great, it's the aforementioned lack of Proper Focus that makes it less than it might've been.

adityamurti79 What do you do when you come back home after serving time, and find your children abandoned by their mother, fending for themselves in their apartment. What do you do, when to add to your miseries the social service gives you one final warning to either mend your ways, or lose your family forever.I can't say much about us, but Wild Bill Hayward (Charlie Creed-Miles) works as a human signpost. He can't risk it and wants to set the broken pieces right. His elder son Dean (Will Poulter) is a no nonsense guy. A tough life in the absence of his parents has made him being worked up all the time.But the crown goes to Jimmy (Sammy Williams) who is the sweetest kid in the block, and is successfully, and willingly lured by the drug peddlers, and the local drug dealer. He is the one who seems to have inherited his father's genes perhaps. But Bill knows that he has to fight back. He has to keep Jimmy out of harms way, and in his mission, he is arrested again for breaking the terms of the parole.The story of the film is good, but the way it has been scripted and has been shot makes that difference, and makes it a winner.Two classy scenes that's a must watch. The scene where Bill makes a paper airplane and propels it to take a wonderful flight from his balcony much to the delight of Jimmy.The second one is the last scene, when he tells the cop as he is about to be driven away on the police car. "They are my boys. I am their dad", and then he cries almost inconsolably. I still feel that powerful emotion while I am writing this review.It's a must watch movie that would remind you of the style in Tyrannosaur and most of the attitude in Attack the Block. Go for it.Indiekaleidoscope

octopusluke Since Guy Ritchie's 1998 feature debut Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, British drama has been obsessed with clichéd gangster movies. They're relatively low cost to make, quick turnaround shoots with huge box office opportunity. Stylistically a mixture of fifties kitchen sink drama and the angry young men fronted British New Wave, the genre today has quickly become an outmoded self-parody, in desperate need of revitalising. Along comes venerable actor Dexter Fletcher. Rising from the fag ash of Guy Ritchie's Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, his first foray into filmmaking takes the same hackneyed themes of…Hackney, and tells a new story full of satire, sincerity and heart.After eight years behind bars, "Wild Bill" Hayward (Charlie Creed-Miles) returns home to his family in their tower block home. The wife is nowhere to be seen, abandoning their two children – paternal teenager Dean (Will Poulter) and his potty mouthed brother Jimmy (Sammy Williams) – for the sunny sights of Spain with her new boyfriend.A tough nestle back in to normality, the broken home soon leads to social services reps (Jaime Winstone and Jason Flemyng) asking questions. They fend them off by pretending to play happy families, but the bossy Dean tells his work-shy dad to go straight and get a job. Doing porridge has changed the ex-drug dealer, but unfortunately the apple doesn't fall far from the tree as Jimmy is accosted by local thug Terry (Leo Gregory) as a drug mule. Fighting for his freedom on the outside, Bill steps back in to the game, saving his son and taking a quick crash course on parenthood in the process.Whilst the story is far from revolutionary, Fletcher and his writing partner Danny King have crafted a truly excellent script, which is neither excessively ghettoized, nor saccharine. The good works lead to good performances too, particularly from Son of Rambow's Bill Poultner, showing great range as the apathetic teenager turned surrogate father figure. Virtually a non-budget movie, it's clear that Fletcher went through the phonebook and asked for a few favours of his supporting cast. Everyone's here: the compelling Olivia Williams as the concerned social worker, Sean Pertwee as the no-nonsense constable who through Bill in the slammer those eight years ago and, best of all, Andy Serkis puts down the motion capture play things for a menacing performance as an East London mafioso. I wish he put down the motion capture play things and started doing more straight-up screen performances; his animated face-acting is always a scene stealer.Unfortunately there is some duds amongst all the finite work. Misfits' Iwan Rhoen is insufferable as a slang-tastic hoodlum – so much that he even starts to annoy his co-stars. Newcomer Liz White's turn as an abused call girl is too flippant and lacks character depth. The biggest disappointment comes from Wild Bill himself. Sublime as a drugged-up Billy incarnate in Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth, he is too emotionally uncharged throughout.Evenstill, it's still a brilliant debut from Fletcher. Working on film sets since the young age of ten when he played Baby Face in Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone, he clearly has a deep insight of how to craft a story, shoot a scene and carve out some solid performances. All that, plus a great ska fever soundtrack and the best pub-fight sequence since Shaun of the Dead. It's as good as a gangster film can get. Let's hope he puts down the faux-Burberry scarves and trade them in for invigorated, ambitious new material.Read more reviews now at www.366movies.com