Attack the Block (2011, Joe Cornish) (Patreon)

71/100

Second viewing, no change. “Made a note suggesting I had something to say about its fascinating racial politics," says my previous Letterboxd "review" (added years later; I didn't write anything at the time due to my departure for TIFF '11 right after seeing it), "but not sure what I was thinking of—maybe the way early scenes seem to deliberately play into negative stereotypes that'll later be subverted." Yep, that was indeed what I meant. It would have been far less risky for Cornish (who's white—I wasn't sure until I checked just now) to make Moses and his crew unequivocally heroic throughout, with Sam mistakenly assuming the worst of them at the outset. Instead, he attempts something more difficult and productive: gradually altering our perception of characters who start out quite unsympathetic, without ever softpedaling their transgressions. It's the same trick that Mike Leigh pulls off in Naked (albeit on a lesser scale—Moses is a teddy bear compared to Johnny), and Cornish even employs the same minor cheat: juxtaposing our semi-antihero with someone who's far more vicious (in this case, the psychopathic Hi-Hatz), thereby making him look at least a bit cuddlier by comparison. (Boyega's tactical suppression of his natural ebullience seals the deal; hard to believe this is the same actor who plays the oft-dorky Finn.) Its fantastic premise notwithstanding, Attack the Block remains stubbornly realistic about the dynamic between Sam and the others; when Moses tries to apologize to her toward the end, she objects to his words being motivated solely by tribalism ("We never knew you lived in the block. If we knew you, we wouldn't have stepped to you"), rather than by general regret at having mugged anyone at all. One ordinarily wouldn't expect that degree of genuinely complex psychology from a low-budget alien-invasion asskicker, and it makes the ending—a less despairing gloss on Night of the Living Dead's, with the black kids (plus Pest, technically, but the animus still feels more race- than class-based) falsely blamed for nightmarish violence they'd valiantly combatted, and Sam struggling to convey the truth to cops who are clearly uninterested—all the more disturbing. (Though Cornish, a crowdpleaser by temperament, avoids bumming audiences out by cutting to the credits on a shot of Moses smiling as he listens to the crowd cheering for him. Vindication seems likely.)

Best of all, the above constitutes gravy. Kinetic mayhem, rowdy humor, first-rate creature design, and regional specificity are the meat and potatoes; the film works superlatively well as sheer entertainment, a simple yet creative sci-fi siege that accomplishes a lot with relatively little. I shuddered again at the sight of two dozen eyeless toothy wolf-things climbing the exterior of the main council estate, and laughed aloud again at the shot of Nick Frost and that other kid sitting side by side on the couch, apparently in shock, before finally exhaling giant smoke clouds in unison. It's a giddy good time. But what'll likely stick with me is the moment when Sam ventures out into the hallway and is briefly unsure which is scarier: the bloodthirsty monsters she can hear in front of her, or the group of teenagers standing behind her. Even considering that the latter had threatened her with a knife maybe half an hour earlier, that hesitation is insane, and the movie's true subject.