What Do The Critics Say?
"A true testament to the ingenuity capable by filmmakers under a small budget. Director Joe Cornish's "Attack the Block" is that rare cinematic adventure that manages to live up to expectations and surpass them at the same time. Simply one of the best films of the year, I loved "Attack the Block" as it's a wonderfully written and briskly paced thriller that will keep audiences glued to the screen with bonafide laughs and pure entertainment to be had. I highly recommend this to any self respecting film buff."
Felix Vasquez Jr CINEMA CRAZED
"The action here is different: it's fun. Funny and energetic, Attack the Block is great fun. Not scary, not interested in making you worry about the lives of those in Council Blocks, not too concerned with how or why the aliens are here. Just fun. Really, really good fun."
CJ Johnson THE NIGHT LIFE
"This is a snarky, humorous movie about blasting aliens to bits, but if you're looking for more, you won't be left hanging. High-concept fun, pitting deadly invading aliens against a motley bunch of inner-city Londoners in an all-out war. Writer/director Joe Cornish imbues a simple, straightforward premise with character-driven depth and relentless full-throttle activity, sustaining the adrenaline through the entirety of the picture’s eighty eight minutes."
Robert Levin FILM SCHOOL REJECTS
"Teenage public-housing hooligans battle toothy "Critter"-esque aliens in this vibrant, funny and exciting science-fiction indie-action film, buoyed by the novelty of its South London council-block setting, complete with rap-reggae soundtrack, melting-pot slang, impenetrable accents and underdog/bunker mentality: part pride, part paranoia. As the action becomes more claustrophobic, the viewer's heart soars: swept along not just by the momentum of the narrative but by the enthusiasm of the filmmaker and his wonderful ensemble cast."
John Beifuss COMMERCIAL APPEAL
"Even though Cornish is a noted comedian in England, the focus here falls squarely on the action. Sure, there are a few laughs, but they're born of the characters and their situation, as their 'hood is transformed into an extraterrestrial war zone. You'll recognize Frost from such action comedies as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
Brett Michel BOSTON PHOENIX
"Cornish has fashioned an impressively energetic directorial debut, bolstered further by his own remarkably efficient screenplay. The hoodlums’ casual chemistry (all of them played by unknowns) goes a long way toward making these initially reprehensible protagonists worth rooting for. Attack the Block speaks well for Cornish. More importantly, it’s just damn fun."
William Goss ORLANDO WEEKLY
"Who doesn't love a no-name movie that gets very good very quickly? And then defies all odds to stay that way to the end? The mid-year sci-fi dud Cowboys & Aliens, starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, cost roughly twenty times more than Attack the Block. And was roughly one-twentith as good. When the going gets tough. Attack the Block hangs as tough as any modern thriller should."
Leigh Paatsch ADELAIDE ADVERTISER
"This smartly assembled, effortlessly cool sci-fi comedy makes instant stars out of the charismatic non-professionals who comprise most of the young cast. That's an especially tricky feat given that the characters start out as contemptible street punks, a roving gang of bat and chain-wielding muggers. Few movies this year have been as all-out fun to watch as this one."
Eric D Snider ERICDSNIDER
"I briefly: very briefly; questioned whether first-time feature filmmaker Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block was really five-star material. But considering that I had as much or more fun with the film as I’ve had with anything this year, and because there’s more here than meets the eye, I decided that anything other than five stars would be brazenly dishonest. There isn't a single thing I would change about the film's brisk eighty eight minute running time."
Ken Hanke MOUNTAIN XPRESS
The Inside Story
It’s an age-old question, posed by scientists and philosophers the world over: what would happen if ferocious aliens invaded a South London council estate? Most people would probably answer that question with a question. "What sort of alien would attack a South London council estate in London? The answer is simple: "One that's lookin for a fight!" In Joe Cornish's debut movie "Attack The Block", the answer is, they’d soon meet their match, in the form of a group of teenaged youths: or, if you prefer; hoodies, who start the film as the de facto bad guys, mugging an innocent nurse on her way home from work. It was exactly that intriguing dichotomy, that clash between outward menace and inward steel, that compelled Cornish to take a group often condemned and demonised by society and turn them into heroes over the course of one crazy night. "That’s what excited me, starting with a kid who did something bad, like mugging somebody," says Cornish. "That was a fun thing to write, the challenge of trying to turn your empathy around over the period of the film." While this film is a pure sci-fi film, transporting the tropes and conventions of the genre to a tower block teeming with life, its origins are much more mundane. "A gang of quite young kids nicked my wallet and phone through sheer force of numbers," Cornish recalls, citing an incident that took place in 2001. "I’m a typical coward and I gave them everything." Well, not quite. They may have made off with his material goods, but the mugging: or, to be more accurate, enforced borrowing; set Cornish’s thoughts racing. "I was struck by how young they were, and I thought to myself, I probably see you in the park every day. We’re probably on the same level of Call Of Duty!" That, of course, was back in 2001. During that time, Cornish was working on his successful TV and radio career, often working in tandem with his old friend Adam Buxton, while beavering away on a succession of screenplays. "I’ve been trying to write a screenplay since I was about thirteen. I could never finish one. I had amazing first acts and loads of ideas for endings, but I had what everyone has, which is the middle act black hole." But eventually one of those screenplays "The Astonishing Ant Man", co-written with his old friend, "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" director Edgar Wright, made it to the finishing line, and that gave Cornish the impetus to give "Attack The Block" one more go. Having secured funding from Film4 to write the screenplay, Cornish took the idea, along with several others, to two producer collaborators he'd long known, Nira Park and Jim Wilson. Park's Big Talk was the production company responsible for the success of "Hot Fuzz" and "Shaun of the Dead". "I came to Nira and Jim with three or four ideas, and this was the one that everybody leapt on," Cornish revealed. Recognising the potential in the idea, Big Talk 26 Nassau Street, London W1W 7AQ, took advantage of a slate deal it had recently struck with the UK Film Council and Film4 to fund the development of a series of British-set comedies. "Attack The Block" fitted in perfectly with their plans. "What stood out was the idea of a genre film in which the protagonists are London council estate teenagers," says producer Jim Wilson, "but which subverted the stereotypes of that world and those characters." Cornish's film may have its roots in science-fiction, but from the off, Cornish was adamant it would feel as realistic as possible, with dialogue and characters torn straight from the streets and estates he’d grown up around in South London. In the case of phrases like "allow it" and "believe, bruv", the film seems like a ready-made treasure trove of golden quotes in waiting.
Cornish admits, "The language for me was a really attractive thing. I love "A Clockwork Orange" and remember novels I’ve read like "The Colour Purple" and "Butcher Boy" that are written in argot. For the first couple of pages, they’re impenetrable but then something magic happens and you pick it up by osmosis. So I thought there was an opportunity to maybe do a similar thing. Those kids have their own little language and it’s a sci-fi film, so it’s Klingon, isn’t it? For me, that’s a sci-fi element." To get fully acquainted with that language, Cornish and Associate Producer, Lucy Pardee ("Secret Life of the Classroom"), embarked on a year long tour of youth clubs in South London, interviewing kids there in an attempt to get inside the heads and lingo of his would-be characters. "Despite having grown up in South London, I’m not as street as I might be. So we did a lot of research. I wrote the story in a quite cartoony way, the outline of what I wanted to happen, and got a friend to do illustrations of what the creatures looked like. We blew them up onto big bits of card and we talked to groups of kids who were the real thing, and talked them through the story, recording everything they said." The sessions were incredibly rewarding. "The amazing thing is that they pretty much would follow the story without being told. We would say, 'What would you do?' 'If it jumped on me, I’d fucking kick it!' It was very satisfying. They endorsed the story and often went in the same direction we had hoped they would go." Executive Producer Matthew Justice ("Russian Dolls") was also blown away by that first script draft and Joe’s attention to detail. "Watching him do the painstaking research that he did and the amount of thought that went into all of his choices, even though he hadn’t directed a movie before, you knew that he had a huge amount of film knowledge and was incredibly film literate." Eventually Cornish had a script he was happy with, and a good idea of the sort of film he wanted to make, which he describes as: "More like a John Carpenter movie, or a sort of early low-budget high-concept 80s monster action film, really. It’s definitely influenced by Carpenter, trying to be a little minimal with dialogue and make it a bit less dialogue-driven than your average British film and make it about kinetics and action and movement." More importantly, he also had five unique selling points; a quintet of heroes that would be unlike anything else that British cinema had given us before. Now all he had to do was find them! The film opens with Sam walking home from a tube station following a hard shift. She soon runs into trouble, in the form of a mugging by five hooded youths. The clumsy mugging is interrupted when a meteor falls on a nearby car, allowing Sam to make her escape in the confusion. Most films would follow Sam, but Cornish stays with the kids: Moses, Pest, Dennis, Jerome and Biggz; as they encounter and kill a tiny but ticked-off alien that emerges from the blasted wreckage of the car. As a first-time director, Cornish was aware of the risks of casting five similarly inexperienced actors in his lead roles. It was a challenge he embraced, attending drama workshops and the same youth clubs he had been to before with Casting Director, Nina Gold and Lucy Pardee. And one by one, he found his gang. The gang is led by the stoic, strong, silent Moses, a young boy torn between his innate decency and the chance to escape the drudgery of the block by entering the employ of local druglord, Hi-Hatz. Continuing the John Carpenter theme, Cornish saw Moses as a throwback to one of that director’s iconic heroes. "I had a Snake Plissken thing going on for Moses," says Cornish.
And how does Cornish compare his lead character Moses, to the one-eyed hero, Snake Plissken, played by Kurt Russell in the 1981 John Carpenter film, "Escape From New York": Moses "doesn’t have an eyepatch, but he has three scars on his cheek and he gets arrested and they cut the cuffs off, so he ends up with these two little handcuff bracelets on. He’s got a combat jacket which gives him a little bit of agitprop rebelliousness. I did think of the characters in terms of little action figures. I imagined what Kenner would do with my cast!" Eventually, he found his own life-sized action figure, with fully articulated, posable parts, in the form of John Boyega, a young actor who already had some experience under his belt in the form of a number of plays and who appeared with Eddie Marsan and Romola Garai in the 2011 Tinge Krishnan film, "Junkhearts". "When they gave me the full synopsis, I was like, 'I’m in this film. I don’t care. I’m getting in this film!' Moses is a silent and brave type. He’s a good kid in bad circumstances and he deals with what he’s got and you can’t really blame him; he has no choice. He’s silent because he doesn’t want to open up too much. He doesn’t want people to ask questions and he finds it hard to trust anyone." Moses’s right-hand man, Dennis is a cool cat whose unflappable nature and skills with a samurai sword come in handy when facing off against the worst that space can throw at the kids. "He’s a cocky, good-looking Han Solo roguish type," says Cornish, "and we found a kid like that. We were lucky in that way, I think." That kid was Franz Drameh ("Hereafter"). "He’s the hothead of the gang. He’s fascinated with bikes, motorbikes, mopeds and BMX’s," Drameh explained. "He’s the rash one. When I read the script, I was happy with the way that the gang was portrayed. As the film goes on, the audience begins to see that a gang is more than just youths that go and rob people, and you see how they’re just normal people too." With his big NHS specs and school uniform peeking out from under his street clothes, Jerome, played by Leeon Jones seems the most incongruous member of the gang. Jones notes: "There’s no movie like this really, because you’ve seen all these movies of aliens, but then you always ask yourself what would happen if aliens attacked my hood." Biggz, one of the most youthful members of the group, ends up spending most of the movie in an unusual and uncomfortable position. "The kid we cast, Simon Howard, was a really stylish kid and he would come to the castings with really cool clothes," Cornish recalls. "We let him choose his own costumes and he ended up looking like a little Inspector Gadget". For Simon Howard, acting was a new experience. "The script came to my house on Christmas Eve. It was a happy Christmas present! I was like, this is gonna be a sick film because I’ve always thought there’s gangs in films, but why can’t there be like a gang versus a ghost, or a gang versus an alien? And now the film’s finally come!" For Sam, Cornish turned to Jodie Whittaker ("St. Trinian’s" & "Venus". "Jodie was one of the last actresses I met for the part," says Cornish. Meeting her was a very big relief. I'd been starting to get worried. Luckily, she was perfect." Having moved to London from Huddersfield herself several years ago, Whittaker could easily identify with Sam’s fish out of water character, noting: "It’s that thing of moving to London, finding an area, moving in, and standing out like a sore thumb." Aware of the strain that could be placed upon his young, inexperienced cast, Cornish was cautious to slowly indoctrinate them into their new world. "I think the big jump was getting them to work with the script," Park ("Paul") offered.
What's It All About?
 Trainee nurse Sam is walking home to her flat in a scary South London tower block when she’s robbed by a gang of masked, hooded youths. She’s saved when the gang are distracted by a bright meteorite, which falls from the sky and hits a nearby parked car. Sam flees, just before the gang are attacked by a small alien creature that leaps from the wreckage. The fired-up gang chase the creature and Moses kills it, dragging its ghoulish carcass to the top of the block, which they treat as their territory. While Sam and the police hunt for the gang, a second wave of meteors fall. Confident of victory against such feeble invaders, the gang grab weapons, mount bikes and mopeds, and set out to defend their turf. But this time, the creatures are bigger. Much bigger. Savage, shadowy, toothy and bestial, they are hunting their fallen comrade and nothing will stand in their way. But the gang has other ideas.
The Verdict
"If you enjoyed the humour of "Paul" and the excitement of "Super 8", you're in for a treat with this completely out of left field, Sc-Fi, comedy- actioner from Director Joe Cornish; producer Nira Park ("Shaun Of The Dead" & "Paul"); producer James Wilson ("Shaun of the Dead" & "The Lovely Bones"); Executive producer Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead" & "Hot Fuzz") and Executive producer Jenny Borgars ("The Awakening"). With rave reviews from the critics both here and abroad, you'd be right in thinking that those who are big fans of the Alien/Sci-Fi genre would be rushing to see it. While the trailer reveals what is behind the films name, many will wonder what "Attack The Block" means. Simple! It's an Alien invasion, set in the Wyndham Tower on the Clayton Estate in South London. It features some great action pieces; excellent creature effects; some wicked humour; keeps its pace over 88 minutes and, it certainly deserves a big (no make that a huge) tick. As debut feature film director Cornish explained: "It starts with the mugging and doesn’t stop. It rattles along." What makes "Attack The Block" even more praiseworthy is the fact that except for Jodie Whittaker (who plays the gangs first victim) and Nick Frost (who plays a 'stoner' living on the estate), this is a cast of unknowners. Could there be a sequel? When the question was put to Cornish, he replied (with a twinkle in his eyes): "I could definitely think of something: but not immediately. I’ve got lots of other ideas first. But it would be fun. After all, these things could land anywhere." If you're looking for something different this is it! 4 1/2 STARS."
Who Is Playing Who?
John Boyega
Alex Esmail
Franz Drameh
Leeon Jones
Simon Howard
Jodie Whittaker
Nick Frost
Jumayn Hunter
Luke Treadaway
Michael Ajao
Sammy Williams
Jermaine Smith
Paige Meade
Danielle Vitalis
Lee Long
Selom Awadzi
Maggie McCarthy
Saffron Lashley
Natasha Jonas
Gina Antwi
Haneen Hammou
Terry Notary
Arti Shah
Karl Baumann
Joey Ansah
Adam Leese
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Moses
Pest
Dennis
Jerome
Biggz
Sam
Ron
Hi-Hatz
Brewis
Mayhem
Probs
Beats
Dimples
Tia
Patrick
Tonks
Margaret
Roxanne
Gloria
Dionne
Bubbles
The Creature
Creature Performer
Creature Performer
Policeman 1
Policeman 2
The Production Team
Directed by Joe Cornish
Written by Joe Cornish
Produced by Nira Park & James Wilson
Original Music by Steven Price
Cinematography by Thomas Townend
Film Editing by Jonathan Amos
Casting by Nina Gold
Production Design by Marcus Rowland
Art Direction by Andrea Coathupe
Set Decoration by Dick Lunn
Costume Design by Rosa Dias
Run Time 88 minutes
Rated MA15+ [AUST]
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