Excellent, a Must See

Awesome Movie

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Very real look into London and the drug culture. Enjoyable watch, particularly considering the low budget! Riz Ahmet is fantastic and you can see why he went on to have such a fantastic career. Writer/Director Eran Creevy's little gem. I am looking forward to seeing his latest project after being left slightly underwhelmed by 'Welcome to the punch'.

There are lots of things that made this film 'good' in my estimation, most of those things have been discussed by other reviewers already. For example: strong performances, some lovely cinematography etc. But the 'thing' that really struck me about this film was the brave attempt to depict drug dealing and drug use in an unglamorous context. English crime / gangster films had moved into a comic book realm in the late 90s early 00s - courtesy of Guy Richie's thoroughly entertaining 'Lock Stock....' - I have no problems with that little genre. However - this was always a white middle class guy's romantic comic book version of drug deals and guns. This is not a criticism, as I say, the films he makes are good fun and entertaining. They are what they are. So it is all the more wonderful to see a film like this one. The Respectable working class milieu, not everyone lives in a decrepit London (or Manchester or Liverpool) decaying block of flats with graffiti and p**s stains on the wall for example. The 's**t - shire' - nothing place. Not quite street cred enough to be 'cool' - the camera pans over rows of little houses with bins out the front, small gardens, indistinct small scale warehouses, the underpass, the quiet suburban streets. This is not London, this is not the country, this is the nowhere's ville where a larger percentage of 'us' actually come from than we care to admit at times. The kitchen sink averageness of the cocaine addicted building site worker, the quietly observed sadness of the crack smoking old lady in her familiar looking flat, framed photograph of a daughter, grand daughter on the mantle. It is the quietness of this film that really got to me, which made the final scenes all the more horrific and powerful. It made me think of a Billy Bragg lyric 'Don't go reminding me again of how brittle bone is.' No rock n rollers, no sharply dressed fellas on the make. Just people, who look like people at the local shopping centre you walk past everyday. While it is not perfect, I eagerly await the director's next film. Hats off to all the actors involved as well - not a weak link anywhere. Mr. Mays: you were sensational! If you want to see a film that is not a post modern comic book version of life (and again, these films have their appeal for me at times) give this one a go.

Well its something we Brits are good at, making gritty dramas like Adulthood and even Bulletboy. Here we return to the genre with Shifty, set in a turbulent London gangland but also those it affects who are not a part of it. Violent and shocking, but its this quality that wins it for me unlike most movies that make the young viewers want to be a part of this world this movie shows us the other side of the glamour, the guns and the power. Those we love can get entangled in it and become at risk or in danger.To many of us that is the one drawback of this life, again a stellar cast and top notch acting that could shame some of the more poor gritty films of this calibre out there. A star film pure and simple, a great addition to British cinema.

Shifty is being hailed in some quarters as an early contender for best British film of 2009 - a double-edged blessing for any debut, which can rarely hope to live up to the hype, however well intentioned. Shifty isn't the second coming, the one true saviour of UK independent cinema. But it's a very decent little crime thriller, with a lot of heart, that deserves more than a couple of weeks at the repertory before being marooned on DVD.Chris (Daniel Mays) returns from Manchester to the (fictional) outer London suburb of Dudlowe after four years in white-collared exile. To his surprise, he discovers his old school mate Shifty (Riz Ahmed), the "smart kid in class, four A-levels", has since transformed from a part-time weed merchant into a full blown crack dealer.Over the next 24 hours, the country mouse accompanies the town mouse on his rounds, supplying everyone from middle-class hippies to dead eyed kids, while being stalked by an increasingly agitated Trevor (Jay Simpson), a broken family man prepared to take his next fix by any means necessary. (Shifty must be selling some uncommonly good gear.) Meanwhile his brother Rez (Nitin Ganatra) is about to kick him out of his house, and double-crossing supplier Glen (Jason Flemyng) is setting him up for a fall. Can Chris convince Shifty to abandon his life at the crack face before he comes a cropper? 'Shifty' sounds like an ITV comedy drama from the late 1960s or early 1970s, no doubt starring Hywel Bennett or Adam Faith as its eponymous lovable rogue; up to no good, but more victim than predator - and that's pretty much the case here. An ocean away from The Wire's corner boys, Baltimore's tooled-up foot soldiers marinated in murder, Shifty's scrappy pushers embody a familiar kind of hapless Englishness; the sort who might shut up shop for a day, owing to the wrong kind of snow on the road. Yet for all its lively banter ("I can't believe you just sold crack to Miss Marple and struck a deal with Blazin' Squad") the film is no quirky apologia for crime. This is the pedestrian reality of drug abuse: people hurting themselves in small rooms.All the cast are terrific, playing real three-dimensional characters, but actor-musician Riz Ahmed is standout as the titular live wire, utterly nailing the dealer's temporal mindset. He might look as if he's physically occupying a scene, but he's not really there at all - his eyes tell us he's already on the next page, a parasitic tick, eternally leaping from host to host.Writer-director Eran Creevy drew his inspiration from a former school friend, an A-grade pupil who discovered he could make more money in the real world by dealing drugs. Not for Shifty being "stuck in a warehouse, knocking out dodgy Fruit Of The Loom". Had things worked out differently, we can easily imagine him popping up on 'The Apprentice', back-chatting Sir Alan.Creevy eschews the woozy, art-house ambiance of Duane Hopkins' Better Things - another portrait of a drug-decimated community - for naturalistic dialogue and performances within carefully framed and composed shots; properly cinematic, grown-up direction. Though we never get the impression we're watching a wildly original cinematic voice, it's refreshing to encounter a film featuring gritty, 'urban' subject matter that hasn't been shot with a hyperventilating DV camera.This relative stillness and subtlety gives rise to moments of exceptional power. During one scene, Shifty delivers to posh, pensionable hippie Valerie (Francesca Annis), in a grimy council flat littered with Moroccan tat and dead, stiff cats. It is safe to assume this is a long way from where she imagined she was going to end up. After everybody has had a nice cup of tea, Chris and Shifty hunch embarrassedly on the opposite sofa in silence, while Valerie gratefully sucks on the pipe, gently collapsing back into her chair, as muffled, moronic techno from the flat upstairs leaks through the ceiling into the room.Such damn fine film-making reflects well on Shifty's sponsor, the Microwave project, which gives aspiring UK indie filmmakers a chance, a mentor, and some money to help realise their dreams. The catch: they have to turn their movie around in just 18 days on a budget of £100,000. While everyone, from caterers to star actors are paid the same, inducing a more democratic vibe on set. Heathrow horror Mum & Dad, released on Boxing Day 2008, was the first film to be made under the scheme. Shifty is the second. There are eight more to come.