Institutional menace and an idealistic take on redemption sit side-by-side in Top Boy actor Ashley Walters’ empathic and occasionally over-earnest film
T
he lawless brutality of a young offender institution is the setting for this British movie written by Marching Powder’s Nick Love and directed by Ashley Walters. It’s a place where terrified newbies realise they can survive only by abandoning their innocence and decency, and submitting to the gang authority of a psycho top G, naturally involving a horrible loyalty test.
This is a place where drugs arrive by drone, where facially tattooed men meet each other’s gaze with a cool opaque challenge in the canteen, and where the cues and balls on the recreation area’s pool table have only one purpose: to give someone a three-month stay in the hospital wing while underpaid guards in lanyards and ill-fitting v-neck jumpers look the other way.
Tut Nyuot plays Troy, just arrived on remand for conspiracy to commit murder. Having been emotionally messed up by his neglectful, vulnerable mum Joy (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), he instantly forms a bond with Krystian (Vladyslav Baliuk), a shy Polish kid remanded for a chaotic attempt to burgle a library, in order to sniff the glue used to repair bindings. They are menaced by the chilling Dion (Sekou Diaby), whose rule they must obey; they are wary also of the sinister Mason (Ryan Dean). Stephen Graham plays Claypole, the unit’s caring youth worker.
