Made for a measly £3,500, Greg Hall’s hip-hop take on La Haine is an admirable achievement. It may have its sticky plot points and Hall occasionally overloads the action to keep attention deficiency at bay. But the story of four mixed-race London slackers who fall foul of drug dealers, neo-Nazi muggers and the Bill, as they duck and dive their way through a typical inner-city weekend, has a freshness and a scally nous made all the more credible by the obvious camaraderie of the leads.
Less convincing, however, are Skinnyman’s direct-to-camera rap interludes, which often feel as though a Greek chorus has wandered into shot.