Attack the Block

Attack the Block stands out from this year’s sci-fi action adventure films for offering thrilling ideas. Unlike Hollywood’s tentpole blockbusters, this relatively low-budget British comedy about a group of teenagers in London’s Brixton ghetto defending their turf against an alien invasion has a purpose: It explores the emotional, as well as sociological, meaning of "home" for these disenfranchised kids. Doing so revives the relevance of pop entertainment; it enhances a sense of the world rather than peddling distraction from it.

Obviously Attack the Block contrasts the cornball ideas associated with suburban neighborhoods in J.J. Abrams’ bowdlerized Spielberg knock-off Super 8. Moses, Jerome, Pest and mates roam the streets of their council flat in packs, at night, looking for trouble to stave off their own restless boredom—ironically during the Other London’s fireworks display that camouflages the extraterrestrial landings. By not taking childhood and adolescent innocence for granted, Attack the Block makes a subtly flashy, noir-like point of social identity.

This unsentimentalized black gang is first seen as thugs, harassing and robbing young white nurse Sam (Jodie Whittaker), returning home from work. Ethnic fears are aroused as a sociopolitical bugaboo that will eventually—when Sam, the teens and their girlfriends are running together and fighting for their lives—reveal an unexpectedly complex and wildly funny understanding of community and Britishness.

Attack the Block’s comic-ghoulish street sense (the aliens are described as looking like a "monkey fucked a fish") is exactly the kind of thing Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and cohorts don’t do on the SNL knockoff sitcom 30 Rock, with its snarky celebration among privileged media-elites. Here, awareness of class dissatisfaction applies to different races and professions (including cops vs. dole-queuers), if not exactly uniting them. Situations of terrorized combat and party-like scenes of desperate self-defense are the deliberate flip side to Royalist celebrations (such as the recent William and Kate event that punk-satirist Morrissey tagged "The Royal Dreading").

Not since the best Blaxploitation films and their better offshoots (such as the 1977 Brixton West Indian comedy Black Joy and Walter Hill’s 1979 The Warriors), has there been an urban movie so saturated in the commonplace details of underclass anxiety, violent teen energy and aggression. Michael Bay eventually lost touch with how those feelings get released through noisy spectacle, and in Transformers 3′s final quarter, he cravenly dragged in Tyrese Gibson and token black soldiers for fake solidarity. Attack the Block’s gang of teens illustrate an authentic range of white locals and fourth-generation-immigrant malcontents, and they have movie star appeal—especially Boyega playing 15-year-old Moses, a young Denzel type, bursting with hormones, anger and a great smile. He wears an alien carcass on his back and goes into battle with a mythological warrior’s fearlessness. (He’s nicknamed "Ninja" in accord with his mates’ pop-culture values.) Moses’ opposite is a drug dealer, Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter), who shows equally wild bravery if less common sense. There’s also a duo of pre-teen cyclists who devise ingenious ways to protect their turf and other diverse Brixton denizens, including the great Nick Frost as Ron, a pothead bemused at all the symbolic and existential fighting.

Frost’s participation recalls his own notable English comedies Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and this year’s Paul—a sci-fi alien companion piece to Attack the Block. The American sojourn of Paul complements this aggrieved British quest for belonging. Both give wry, comic perspectives on how sci-fi reflects social reality. (One kid in the film reasons the alien attackers were sent by the Feds because, "We weren’t killing each other fast enough.") When the invasion explanation finally comes, it mixes the benign and malign in a knowingly comical way: Heroic Moses, a hip-hop/Rastafarian figure, carries a social stigma that makes him and his gang the aliens’ quarry. The aliens recognize a pheromone that triggers a social response in members of the same species. During a great act of defense, Moses hangs by the Union Jack.

Joe Cornish directs action to bring out the Brits’ valor; he uses monster movie, urban crime and noir motifs with enough verve and surrealism to suggest an Expressionist vision of social turmoil. Blaxploitation junkie Quentin Tarantino never shows this kind of empathy. Attack the Block uses escapism to point audiences back to social reality.

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Attack the Block
Directed by Joe Cornish
Runtime: 88 min.