Shifty

SHIFTY, you'll have no doubt heard already, was made for peanuts. The actors were paid in footrubs and the crew stayed in disused shipping crates piled ten high. Most modern film-makers would wretch right into their Gucci duffel bags were you to break it to them that they had only 100,000 pounds with which to make their next film. Very few would take the job, even fewer would be able to make something as fast-paced, testing and insightful as Shifty.

Eran Creevy, a young and contagiously enthusiastic director whose career so far has been forged in directing advertising and music videos, has used money (half of his overall 100,000 pound budget) provided by the UK Film Council's Microwave scheme to create a very personal and very recognisable portrait of life in and around the satellite towns of the UK. He has captured with real poignancy the soul-sapping isolation of council estate life, the destructive nature of drugs, and the beauty of hope and second chances in such debilitating environments.

It is a very human story at heart, as a young man, Chris (played by Daniel Mays), returns home having left without warning four years earlier. When he returns, the first person he visits is his oldest and best friend, Shifty (played by Riz Ahmed), though their relationship is in dire need of a patch up. The film runs through a day and night, as Chris discovers that Shifty, the cleverest boy at school, has become a major drug dealer, shifting crack cocaine to old women and meeting with his supplier, the immeasurably evil and vindictive Glen (played by Jason Flemyng), in empty car parks. Chris is desperate for Shifty to leave his seedy and dangerous life behind and leave with him to Manchester, but Shifty refuses.

Running along at a very fast pace, there are some brilliantly tense moments, and Creevy's control of the story is astute as he leaks larger and larger doses of the boys' past, and the reasons for Chris' original disappearance, so that we stay hooked to the unravelling story. As the day becomes more and more manic, and Shifty begins to get into some serious trouble, the tension is heightened by Chris' continuing struggle to deal with the guilt he feels over his disappearance, and the strain that he realises he has put on his friend.

The chemistry between the two boys is very believable, and Mays and Ahmed both put in extremely accomplished performances. There are also some great supporting performances from Flemyng and, more notably, from Jay Simpson as Trevor, whose performance as a desperate coke addict and failing husband and father bring a scarring reality to the central, slightly elaborate drugs and dealers story.

For all of its merit, there were times, as the film continued, when I felt like I was being manhandled. I felt as though, with every extra "rudeboy" and every angered expletive, that the characters were losing the naturalism that made so complex at the beginning. When the story reached its crescendo their was a flurry of violence, of punches thrown and guns being pulled, knives brandished, and I was worried that the film was descending into Guy Ritchie territory. I had horrible visions of Jason Statham jumping out from behind a door with two crocodile clips on his nipples, screaming "crank this you fucking slaaaaags!" and ripping Shifty's head off. This didn't happen of course. What did happen was far more revelatory, a twist and turn that honestly threw me, and I was gagging for answers which Creevy did eventually supply, but by know means too soon.

I left the cinema feeling very positive. Not about going outside, I was scared of going outside, for fear of seeing Statham and his nipple-clips. Really, I was enlightened and inspired by Shifty's proving that smaller budgets do not, in any sense, make for smaller films. This is a film that, despite its tendency to get ahead of itself, tackled some truly epic ideas of redemption, friendship, destiny and society, and provided a thrilling ride in the process. A brilliant debut and well worth the money.

Cinema Seating: The Sanctity of Serenity

There are at least two hundred seats in the cinema I'm in, and no more than ten or so people, spread evenly and amicably around the room. The adverts have started and I'm sitting on the very back row, where my seat faces down towards the aisle. I'm not built for cramped conditions - the six feet and four inches that compose my height don't make for comfortable train journeys, bus journeys, lectures or even showers - and so I relish in the idea of being able to leave my legs to dangle down the steps, or even put my foot up on the armrest of the seat at the end of the nearest row. This is a great vice for me, a truly calming and comfortable moment.

But then two things happen. There are two entrances, the first by a pair of young french girls, neither of whom seem to want to sit at the front and so make their way towards me, slowly plodding up the steps with shopping bags strewn over their arms, and carrier bags, a tell tale sign of a noise-maker, the kryptonite to my Superman, dangling from their hands. I watch, my lips pursed, as they reach the top of the steps. The two or three rows in front of me are empty so I am in no hurry to move my feet, presuming, as many would, that they will do the polite thing, for my comfort if not for their own, and sit in the row in front.

No. It becomes clear that only the back row, only the two or three seats to the right of my perfect spot, my cinematic nirvana, can provide them with a satisfying enough experience. I do as much as I can to hold them off, I wait until the last minute to move my legs out of the way, as if commanded by William Wallace to HOLD! But it is no good. Up they go, muttering and giggling as if they had just caught a brief site of Zac Effron's ballsack.

They chatter through the adverts, then the trailers, and I begin to become rueful of my spineless surrender. I shoot them the odd chastising look, but they land in the water with a dull splosh and the girls are unaware that they even under attack. I feel my rage building as the opening credits begin to roll, the chattering and laughing continuing. What can possibly be so funny, I think, about the quiet and poignant opening sequence of Shifty? Am I missing something? Is there poo on the screen? No, there isn't, they're just completely and utterly disrespecting the unwritten rules of cinematic audience participation, they are taking a big steamy piss on the sanctity of the screen. And I am furious. But not as furious as I'm about to be.

As the opening scene unfolds, and I start to enjoy the dialogue, the naturalism of the acting, the delicacy of the exposition, I notice something in the corner of my eye. A shadow. Someone has come in late. A bumbling, bulbous figure begins to round the front of the auditorium and my eyes cannot help but watch him. I know what is about to happen. I know it. I have that flickering eyelid that tells me that someone is about to upset my status quo.

And up he comes. Closer, closer, he glances up towards me, then back down at a weighty pile of receipts and tickets in his hand, the collectings of someone with a less than secure grasp of reality. When he reaches the top of the stairs I brace myself, almost expecting him to sit on my lap and lick my ear for the next hour. He doesn't. He does something worse. He sits DIRECTLY in front of me. In the seat in front. He doesn't know he's doing it but he elbows my foot from the arm rest onto the floor. At this point I think I had a small aneurism. Just a small one, but something popped, something went POP in my brain and I was lost. The seat was ruined. Not only this but we were five minutes into the film and I had not one fucking clue what was going on. Suddenly there were bags of drugs on the kitchen table and someone's brother was shouting at him for not respecting Muslim tradition. I was baffled and the situation needed rescuing. I had not the bottle or nerve to ask anyone to move. It is a free country after all, and there's not much weight in the argument "You can't sit there, it's disturbing my usual viewing structure, plus you've entirely disrupted the audience distribution patterns in this particular screen."

I had no choice but to move. And move I did. Seven or eight chairs down along the same aisle. I made a big deal of it too, picking up my bag so that the strap slapped on the ground, sighing heartily, letting my chair flop back so to clap against the wall. I was making a scene. In all fairness I'd probably distracted more people than I had purposefully scourned, and to you I apologise, but come on...it had to be done.

I enjoyed my film, and didn't glare back along the aisle too many times, only enough to realise that there was no amount of looking, however strained or venomous, that would stop the two girls from enjoying their little catch up time, and that this was not the time to start shouting or tapping on shoulders or throwing wine gums at heads. So I kept on. And it was fine, but it annoys me now, and it annoys me every time I visit the cinema. The same exact thing has happened to me in the same screen only a week before, except that the galling Gallic cacklers were replaced by two older women, both of whom seemed to have forgotten to tell the other about a myriad of recent gossip from the front line.

I am a lunatic, yes. I understand this. What kind of human being would become so passionate about such a minor invasion of public space? But I ask you this; what would you do, men, if you were poised at a urinal, at least six or seven metres of clear, glistening silver to each side, and in walks mister inconsiderate, ready to flop his tiny cock out of his trousers so close to you that you could count the hairs in his ugly, matted bush. Wouldn't you feel begrudged? Invaded? Wouldn't you want to turn around mid flow and soil his feet, just so that he understood the gravity of his incredible lack of social awareness. And women, don't pretend for a second that if you were enjoying a hot summer's day on a beautiful empty beach, miles of clean white sand around you for anyone to enjoy, you wouldn't bite the sand in fury if mister inconsiderate, with his hairy back and uncomfortably shiny face, decided to put his towel down a few feet from yours, belching and scratching his cavernous arse crack.

These are basic feelings! They are natural. I, for one, feel that the cinema is my place of peace, it is my escape, and I enjoy, almost more than the film itself, the finding of good, comfortable spot with a decent view. No-one, not anyone, wants their place of peace, their sanctum, disrupted. You don't see me coming into your yoga class and pulling your mat out from under you like a magician, do you? No. So fuck off out of the cinema, or sit somewhere else. I will fight in the future, not with fists but maybe with words. I will fight and I will probably lose, because there are more people who take the experience with much more lethargy, much less infantile possessiveness. But as long as I am who I am, as long as my heart beats, I will fight for my peace, for decency and consideration in screen 13. That is my memorandum. My call to arms. Now put that fucking plastic bag away before I wrap it around your fucking head.