Wild Bill (2011)

Directed by: Dexter Fletcher

Bill, released after an eight-year stretch in prison, returns to his council flat in the east-end council estate where he finds two sons, fifteen year-old Dean, and eleven-year old Jimmy, fending for themselves, their mother having left some months before.

Dean, who has been working illegally on a building-site (part of the 2012 Olympics construction that forms a backdrop to the movie) while trying to keep the increasingly out-of-control Jimmy at school and away from the attention of the authorities who would take them both into care if they discovered the boys were living alone, is not at all pleased to see his dad back, but sees his presence as a short-term expedient to keep the brothers together at home.

Bill initially flounders when confronted with parental responsibilities but starts to develop a kind of relationship with little Jimmy.  But when Bill’s old criminal colleagues decide they want him out of town, and start to use Jimmy as an innocent-faced delivery boy in their growing narcotics business, Bill is forced into a showdown with the bad guys.

Forget any ideas about a depressing sink-estate melodrama, or an East End geezer movie à la Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  First-time director Fletcher has delivered a rock-solid, uplifting (in the best sense of the word) drama about a dad becoming an admittedly flawed hero.  In that sense, it is much more  western than a gangster movie (the end, in particular, is an homage to High Noon, though the very last scene seemed to reference The Long Good Friday), but with an assured comic touch.

The main characters are all believable and engaging, and the supporting cast excellent (nice to see Andy Serkis as something other than a CGI-enhanced creature, though Olivia Williams is scarcely given space to perform).  Wonderful.