Attack the Block, 2011 This is the face of racism Crash (remember that … Thing?) should have wrestled with, but didn’t. This is also the aliens-attack! movie Signs could have been, but wasn’t. This dealt out the thrill of gee-youth-is-wonderful-and-scary Super 8 might have had, but lacked. This is a great little film. Three moments: 1) Gang members run home to gather weapons, each skirting their curfew in different ways. The brief “love ya mom gotta go” moments that montage in rapid succession as they run down a flight of stairs, each ejecting onto a different floor. A boy scurries through his block apartment in ways that are cute, familiar and sad: just before the serious alien-battling begins, we see each character as vulnerable, alone — not autonomous, grown-up things yet. It’s a lot like those apartment scenes in The 400 Blows: the matter-of-fact living and the pain of having to endure it. It’s also a beautiful thing given how these characters were set up: us on the street, five boys with a knife and a white girl. We end up having compassion for them, and insight, but even more, we recognize them. They have parents, too. They grow and suffer, too. As the movie goes on, the filmmakers humanize more and more. 2) Two practically-baby kids (“nine and a half!”) try to play as cool as their only heroes, the older kids, and are told to get lost. We see them trying to match macho behaviour, cool and clevere attitudes, but only see a water gun and toy pistol. Yet when they’re called on to save a friend, a surprise takes us as it does the friend and we see them anew: as the same piddling wanna-be kids, but deserving of much more credit, much more ingenuity. It’s a hilarious gag and a touching one for what faith they have in the big boys, what earnestness they feel and act on for trying to grow into the next stage of their life. I won’t say what it is, even if you’ve seen this film, as it’s too cute and too special a thing to specify. 3) At the moment of the hero/anti-hero’s revelation, we learn more about his plight, his enemies, than most horror films reveal. In fact, this plot detour nearly humanize the aliens. Nearly because they’re still rave-glowing mobs of black, but nearly because we understand them, we see them as the characters are about to see themselves — as adult males. All through the movie one stage of adolescence is left out, only hinted at but never clearly stated. When the aliens’ secret is discovered, we know that the boys hidden in the pot room (“It’s a room at Ron’s place. With pot.”) feel what their attackers feel, know what that desire is. But because it’s never explicit, it creates a tie with these invaders: an evolution that they’re about to embark upon. And in the final scene, with echoes of Dog Day Afternoon and that film’s strange relationship to law and order, we sense that something has been arrived at, that a realization has happened, not just a victory. Instead of someone owning the block of the title, having it, a feeling of an earned gift, of being given the block, emerges. The boys who so deeply love their quarters, their corner of London, see it as a part of that city: there they’ve defended it and have a right to it, there they’ve realized who they were and where they’re going, and it’s there that they’ve taken the steps to adulthood, to citizenship.

Attack the Block, 2011

This is the face of racism Crash (remember that … Thing?) should have wrestled with, but didn’t.

This is also the aliens-attack! movie Signs could have been, but wasn’t.

This dealt out the thrill of gee-youth-is-wonderful-and-scary Super 8 might have had, but lacked.

This is a great little film.

Three moments:

1) Gang members run home to gather weapons, each skirting their curfew in different ways. The brief “love ya mom gotta go” moments that montage in rapid succession as they run down a flight of stairs, each ejecting onto a different floor. A boy scurries through his block apartment in ways that are cute, familiar and sad: just before the serious alien-battling begins, we see each character as vulnerable, alone — not autonomous, grown-up things yet. It’s a lot like those apartment scenes in The 400 Blows: the matter-of-fact living and the pain of having to endure it. It’s also a beautiful thing given how these characters were set up: us on the street, five boys with a knife and a white girl. We end up having compassion for them, and insight, but even more, we recognize them. They have parents, too. They grow and suffer, too.

As the movie goes on, the filmmakers humanize more and more.

2) Two practically-baby kids (“nine and a half!”) try to play as cool as their only heroes, the older kids, and are told to get lost. We see them trying to match macho behaviour, cool and clevere attitudes, but only see a water gun and toy pistol. Yet when they’re called on to save a friend, a surprise takes us as it does the friend and we see them anew: as the same piddling wanna-be kids, but deserving of much more credit, much more ingenuity. It’s a hilarious gag and a touching one for what faith they have in the big boys, what earnestness they feel and act on for trying to grow into the next stage of their life.

I won’t say what it is, even if you’ve seen this film, as it’s too cute and too special a thing to specify.

3) At the moment of the hero/anti-hero’s revelation, we learn more about his plight, his enemies, than most horror films reveal. In fact, this plot detour nearly humanize the aliens. Nearly because they’re still rave-glowing mobs of black, but nearly because we understand them, we see them as the characters are about to see themselves — as adult males.

All through the movie one stage of adolescence is left out, only hinted at but never clearly stated. When the aliens’ secret is discovered, we know that the boys hidden in the pot room (“It’s a room at Ron’s place. With pot.”) feel what their attackers feel, know what that desire is. But because it’s never explicit, it creates a tie with these invaders: an evolution that they’re about to embark upon.

And in the final scene, with echoes of Dog Day Afternoon and that film’s strange relationship to law and order, we sense that something has been arrived at, that a realization has happened, not just a victory.

Instead of someone owning the block of the title, having it, a feeling of an earned gift, of being given the block, emerges.

The boys who so deeply love their quarters, their corner of London, see it as a part of that city: there they’ve defended it and have a right to it, there they’ve realized who they were and where they’re going, and it’s there that they’ve taken the steps to adulthood, to citizenship.