Strong and Moving!

Good idea lost in the noise

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Sugarhouse is a gritty UK crime thriller set in a very deprived area of London. The plot is based on a middle class man who quickly becomes out of his depth when he tries to buy a gun off a local crack cocaine addict.The actors were extremely well cast with all the characters putting in very believable performances from start to finish. D who is the crack addict owes the local drug dealer a significant amount of money so decides to try and earn the money, by selling the dealers own gun which he has stolen, to a business type white guy who he constantly refers to as "rich man". The dealer is a heavily tattooed well built man with a history of violence and a Northern Irish accent, which adds another level of menace to his already intimidating presence. Naturally he is non too impressed when he finds his weapon missing and sets out to retrieve it.The tense drama unfolds in a very believable and realistic manner and any worries I had of a weak or overly soppy ending were happily unfounded. A very enjoyable watch from the very first minute with a level of grit and reality the Hollywood studios with the big name stars so often struggle to achieve.

Having seen the play Collision at The Old Red Lion some years ago I was interested and exited to see this film version of one of the best contemporary bits of theatre I have seen in recent years. Where the play was taut, tense, real, funny and ultimately moving the film is flabby, hard to follow and ultimately unbelievable.The film never makes its mind up if it is a serious drama or an urban caper. Consequently it feels unbalanced. The performances echo this; ranging from 'real' to totally cartoon like. Somehow the simple plot ends up being hard to follow and the tension of the three way confrontation is totally lost.The play made you laugh but at the same time kept you on the edge of your seat - however the film has no humour at all. Where did all that wonderful, very funny and also poignant dialogue between the crack head and the middle class character that was in the play go to? Perhaps in the hands of a Ken Loach this film would have worked better than it does. As it stands it feels like a total let down of what it could have been.What a shame.

There are no scenes in this movie- just mainly ONE SET of a warehouse area. That right away tells you this movie has no budget, and a variety of other moments show you this is a shoe-string budget affair and the storytelling suffers as a result.This is the story of a man who meets up with a Jamaican crackhead to try and buy something. Unfortunately several other people want to have that something as well and then the conflict begins. The man's unbelievable continual participation in these follies is supposed to be a sign that he is a man on the edge but it is more of a sign that this plot is unrealistic and idiotic to boot. Anyone else would just turn heel and go home- take their business elsewhere.At various moments during the movie you will be wondering why the man doesn't just go home and cut his losses- this is the failure of the plot. If it was any good we wouldn't be continually groaning - oh god.. just GO HOME! The movie seems like it has some sort of retarded message about how revenge just injures yourself and they are willing to bend the plot in unrealistic directions to try and get that point across.Extremely unsatisfying and not on par with Snatch, Lock stock and two Smoking barrels or trainspotting- don't let anyone fool you into thinking this play on film is worth seeing- it's a piece of boring one-set crap.

I saw this at a preview screening... it was a great atmosphere! Ashley Walters really impresses, are those really his teeth? He looks like he's been living in a sewer for a couple of years! He's trying to sell this gun to middle-class Steve Mackintosh, who has found himself for the first time on the wrong side of town as Walters takes him to his home- an abandoned old warehouse. Andy Serkis plays Hoodwink, who's this bloomin scary Ulster man who's somehow found himself on the local estate with his pregnant girlfriend and now runs it, oh and he's the original owner of this gun and he's not too happy that it's gone missing!A special mention i think should go to Hoodwink's three henchmen/stooges. They haven't had much of a chance of being mentioned in the build-up to this film, especially when you have Walters, Mackintosh and Serkis starring, but as you will see they turn in really good performances that added to the film no end. This is a side of the capital that is hardly ever shown in films and it was interesting to see, definitely an intention of the makers to juxtapose this ragged side of London with the brand spanking new (one shot pans up from the estate to a view of Canary Wharf that's just right next to it). The film's also quite bloody, but also had the audience roaring with laughter at some points! The characters were very well constructed and there are very good free-flowing performances by all the actors (director was previously an actor as well i think, so just let them get on with it)... well worth going to see.