This is grim, as it should be given this is a very real and common place scenario these days. The casting and acting is great, all the main parts ring true. My main problem with is the somewhat happy ending, as this is not how I think most of these situations pan out. It also didn't feel believable that his Mum suddenly becomes Mrs Doubtfire after not bothering to ask where the money has come from for the last 6 months while he was wagging school. I know the gravity of what happened might have shocked her into action, but still, I didn't buy that a Mum that neglected him so badly in that time and must have surely known where the money was coming from, could change so much. Maybe I'm just cynical.
County Lines
2019
Action / Drama
County Lines
2019
Action / Drama
Plot summary
The term 'county lines' describes the practice of using children to traffic drugs from cities to coastal towns and rural areas, an under-reported fact of modern British life. Inspired by the stories he heard while mentoring kids at an East London pupil referral unit, writer-director Henry Blake's powerful feature debut boasts a compelling central performance by Conrad Khan as 14-year-old Tyler, whose mum Toni (Ashley Madekwe) is struggling to provide for him and his sister. Excluded from school, Tyler becomes a train-bound narcotics courier for local criminal Simon, played with a calm menace by Harris Dickinson. County Lines (2019) depicts the ensuing cycle of debt, deceit and violent exploitation with a quiet stylistic confidence that's all the more haunting for being so rigorously unsentimental.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Tech specs
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Grim
Broadcast in school
Besides the educational value this movie, this movie is up to standard. It's tragic story and this could happen to any of the kids in our society.
Depressing and uninteresting
With a plot about the use of underage children for transportation of illegal drugs in UK, one would expect that the film would provide engaging fare. Far from it.
The film fails to connect with the audience due to its dull and boring narrative. One waits for the film to get gripping but it doesn't happen. Granted that the atmosphere in the film needed to be stifling, claustrophobic and depressing due to the theme but it still could have been made interesting by a better treatment of the mother son relationship and the angst of a 14 year old boy. In the present form the film is neither an engrossing documentary nor a gripping feature film. Actually it is a few notches below a docudrama too. It is not entertainment and the popcorn with you will become tasteless after some time. The scenes lack finesse. A boy wanting to be a man of the house is OK but the narrative follow up lacks conviction. Where there is sale of drugs there will be dimly lit corridors, shady characters, violence and cuss words. Fair enough but it should be absorbing for the audience.
The film is unnecessarily depressing, pessimistic, morbid. It didn't have to be.