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.