The Lives of the Saints

This film from celebrated celebrity photographer Rankin and newcomer Chris Cottam takes a while to establish it's reality. When faced with the everydayness of what could be any London street corner, you'd be forgiven for thinking this could be one of a hundred faceless, mob-genre London flicks. But what the two directors (with the aid of an interesting script from Tony Grisoni) manage to do is establish an alternate reality in a very familiar surrounding. With some excellent central performances from David Leon (Alexander) and Bronson Webb (Venus), this film attacks the senses and makes the viewer ask questions about morality, greed, lust and power! The haunting presence of the mute Child (Sam MacLintock) adds an eerie dimension to an already altered universe, where people are as likely to spout elegiac prose as cause some serious physical harm. In short, this film delivers where lots of British films fail; it asks questions and packs punches in equal measure. BRILLIANT!

Without question, the worst film I've seen for a long while. I endured to the end because surely there must be something here, but no. The plot, when not dealing in clichés, rambles to the point of non-existence; dialogue that is supposed to be street is simply hackneyed; characters never develop beyond sketches; set-pieces are clichéd. Worse, considering its co-director, the photography is only so-so.

Comments elsewhere that elevate this alongside Get Carter, Long Good Friday or Kaspar Hauser are way way off the mark; Lives of the Saints lacks their innovation let alone their depth and shading. In short, their craft. A ruthless editor could probably trim it down to a decent 30-minute short, but as it stands it's a 6th form film project realised on a million-pound scale; rambling and bloated with its own pretensions. That it received funding (surely only because of Rankin's name) while other small films struggle for cash is depressing for the British film industry.

Local gangsters stumble across a foundling boy and believe that he can confer good luck on whoever "possesses" him. However, the presence of the foundling unearths various deep seated divisions between people and amplifies them, with startling and tragic consequences.

Othello, the stepson of small-scale villain Mr. Karva, wants to step out from his stepfather's shadow and claim his own destiny. He believes that, with a little success, he can jettison certain relationships and seek out new ones, which will be more suitable (in his eyes) to his new station in life. Othello's girlfriend is a local prostitute who specialises in hand relief. She lost her childhood innocence and now yearns for a better, cleaner life, with different values to those of the gangsters. Othello's sidekick, a callow youth who is always in Othello's wake, wants to prove himself in his own right. Mr. Karva is not really as hard as he portrays himself, but he is frightened that others will consider him weak, so he poses as a tough nut in order to gain respect. Stepfather and stepson are very small fish in a very small pond, but both think that they are sharks.

The action takes place in a relatively small decaying urban area. The film captures the character of the neighbourhood perfectly. Interior and exterior shots accurately depict the unwholesome, incestuous, stifling atmosphere of a closed inner city ethnic community, portraying very effectively a low level, low life, parochial localised gang and their contacts, making the film a contemporary example of British realism at its best. The casting is faultless, with the child who plays the foundling as the paradigm.

This film continues the rich heritage of mob films beginning with "Get Carter", followed by "The Long Good Friday", then "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", "Snatch" and more recently "The 51st State". There is homage to "Reservoir Dogs", but this is not simply a reworking of the genre; it is more a blending of the earthy gangster movie with "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser", "The Rocking Horse Winner" and "My Beautiful Launderette". It explores various enduring themes of human conduct including betrayal, guilt, kinship, lost chances, self delusion, ambition, greed, hatred and lost innocence.

Complex relationships are developed and examined. There are scenes of violence and of compassion. The climax is tense and taut. These are the mean and sometimes comical streets of London. Geoffrey Chaucer would be proud to include "The Lives of the Saints" as his final Canterbury Tale.

Don't be fooled by the title of this film - there are far more sinners than saints in it. What happens when you go out for a jog and stumble across a bundle of humanity, thinking at first that it is a drunkard in the gutter, but you then discover that it is a small, angelic looking child? Not only are you surprised by this find, but what subsequently happens when this little beautiful boy appears to have supernatural powers and can change your life according to your will? The possibilities are endless and this film explores some of the enduring themes which have haunted and perplexed mankind since the beginning.

If you like the ancient urban myth of "The Monkey's Paw" you will find much of interest in "The Lives". Be prepared to be taken on a series of personal and emotional journeys, with unexpected results.

Next time you wish for something, be careful. Be very careful indeed.

As a photographer myself, but don't find the aura of Rankin to be beguiling at all, I was almost hoping that this was a failure, that it was as bad as most reviews make it out to be.

Direction-wise, it is very ordinary, indeed. No 'special eye'; just pointing the camera in the right direction at the right time. But, I like a challenge, I like a difficult movie and I'll give Brit flicks an extra effort, so I watched this with an open mind.

Yes, James Cosmo as gangster Karva is a difficult fella to like and I can't work out if he's being himself or is indeed, acting. Either way, he's either overacting or an extremely overexcited, maybe unstable individual. David Leon, as the Runner at least adds some semblance of decency until the movie descends into Tarantino territory, in a torture scene. Then it goes back into a Cockney 'Shameless' zone, as the wide- eyed 'saint/angel' or whatever "it" is goes from speechless orphan to fortune teller and caster of wishes in a nano-second - and miracle of all miracles, everybody knows this, without the child seemingly having said anything.

Unfortunately, The Lives Of...has the narrative consistency of school- dinner custard as it jumps about like a frog in a blender and basically one's faith in it diminishes as all credibility crashes.

The script wants to be big and clever but isn't, it's just shouty and aggressive. As the religious bits kicked in, I was not relishing the afore-warned appearance of Marc Warren, who is, to my mind a greatly overrated actor, who always manages to rub me up the wrong way. That's a personal thing, of course and shouldn't affect my view of the film itself, but it does.

At this point, during a scene in church, where a man burps and then plugs from a large bottle of vodka, I did a rare thing - and switched it off. A waste of everybody's time, especially mine. I saw it on BBC2