All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

What made me watch 'Shank' was its concept. Found it to be a brilliant one, of my recent film viewings the concept here was one of the better and most interesting ones, and executed right 'Shank' had potential to be a halfway decent film. There was a potentially decent story and film in 'Shank', sadly neither come out in a film where it was actually very difficult to find many good things with so much done badly wrong. This is coming from somebody who actually wanted to like the film, not going in expecting to hate it. Some nice atmospheric colours here and there, hence why the rating is not a 1/10, but that is pretty much the only thing in the film that wasn't less than bad, everything else is bad to disastrous. Rest of the production values are just awful, with particularly nauseating photography made even by choppy editing.Music is over-bearing and some of the placement is very random, coming out of nowhere for the sake of it regardless of whether it fit or not. The script throughout is stilted, confused and lacking plausibility, while the story suffers from a chaotic structure and useless overlong padding which makes the pacing painfully erratic on both extremes of rushed and dull. No suspense or intrigue whatsoever and there is nothing to be emotionally invested by, which makes the lead character's plight impossible to identify with.Direction is barely competent, with a far from slick visual style, no sense of drama or urgency and a complete confused mess in tone. The action is poorly filmed and edited and never exciting, instead too loud, very clumsy and too much. Didn't mind so much that the characters were clichés, did mind that they were bland and obnoxious stereotypes with no development let alone depth. The acting is poor and less, the film even bringing the worst out of Colin Salmon.In conclusion, very bad but have seen worse. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Shank tries to emulate those urban Noel Clarke heavy films and again we have an underclass in tower blocks trying to make ends meet in an urban wasteland. At least Shank is set in the near future in a Britain suffering from economic collapse and food is scarce.The film follows Junior and his older brother Rager who is the head of the local gang, 'The Paper Chaserz' who have a moral code of refusing to kill and getting involved in violence. However a plan to steal goods from a van goes wrong as a rival gang called the Soldiers take over the attempted theft and as they chase Junior they end up killing Rager. Junior and his crew are now looking for revenge.The actions starts in a frenetic and heavily choppy edited fashion with Junior doing Parkour moves as he tries to get away from the Soldiers. However as suspected the film runs out of juice, the writer and director seems to think that all the youth of today want to hear is that every other word to have f@@K in it not helped by some too loud rap soundtrack especially near the end when all I wanted to see is the climax of the film and how they will deal with the thrust of their anti violence message if at all possible without being cack handed. Unfortunately cack handed it is as its a circle that cannot be squared. The actors do well especially Kedar Williams-Sterling but they are not helped by the screenplay.

I will have to be extremely short and punctual cause this flick doesn't even deserve more than 2 sentences. Absolute parody of a movie, bad screenplay, worse acting, cheap characters, and for Christ sake this is not English that is spoken, but some degenerated conceptual slang, that is absolutely impossible to get.Not only for jokes, but also simple lines. I'm absolutely glad its over, and will free my harddrive from this non- sense right away. Whoever understands 3 sentences in a row of the speech involved is a superhero according to me. Don't waste money on a sequel, and maybe offer with English subtitles, although I am not sure it will help.Boo

First things first, i have seen both Kidulthood and Adulthood and you can not compare them to this film. Although i think they are better films they are not the same therefore not comparable.I'm a 18 year old black guy, i live in London. I try and stay out of trouble and keep myself to myself, so i found a strong similarity between me and The Paper Chasers.This film was a complete shock to me cos i never expected what they did with it and actually i'm rather impressed.The film was designed to show adults why youths of today are so 'out of control'. They designed the film to show adults how London treats us and how WE see London through our own eyes as the youth of London. It was also designed to show the youths that London doesn't have to be a ghetto, just because it seems that way for few years doesn't make it so. The film is like The Warriors, i made that comparison very early in and i love the idea of the Tugz being sorta like the Riffs and Paper Chasers being the Warriors, traveling through London meeting different gangs. OK, the acting was a bit cringe-worthy at times, the jokes were pretty corny and the plot needed a bit of work, but you have to remember that it is a VERY low budget film, so sometimes you have to let things like that slide. I loved the Kidulthood references, i actually LOLed when the Paper Chasers were on the old bus! I also liked Tempa T and D Double E's performances, i'm a grimekid what can i say! And that Main guy from the Tugz had the most evil smile i have ever seen. LOLAt the end they should have, shown London how it really was and that would have closed the film perfectly for me.So, this film was a VERY good idea, if only there was a bigger budget where they could have sorted the plot out a bit more and fixed up on the acting a little, this film would be around the 7-8 out of 10 mark, but right now i give it a 6.Good film, but it has its flaws.Thanks for reading. P.E. No.1