Angry Movie Lurker Honest Review 52: Attack The Block 2011 (2 STARS)

A teen gang in South London, England defend their block against an alien invasion.

This movie is a reasonably low budget affair ($13,000,000 I believe) form the director Joe Cornish and with me it fails one of my main criteria for most movies in that I have to give a crap for somebody in the movie (and that can be the bad guy or bad aliens) but the opening scene of our heroes mugging at knife point one of the female leads left me slightly angry as I now didn't care if they lived or died (the scene of mugging is interrupted by an alien crash landing on a car so it could have gone further). This alien is given a kicking by the gang and displayed as a trophy until it's far larger mates arrive (really large and shaggy with massive teeth).

What follows is the gang and some other residents (drug dealers, drug buyers, kids etc...) fighting the invasion with the aid of Halloween fireworks, samurai swords, baseball bats etc...). The effects are not bad, the aliens are not bad, the story is a bit lame about the alien intentions, there is some humour and it's an exciting quick ride for an hour and a half. This to me is a story about redemption that doesn't work because I don't care whether they survive or not.

Nick Frost is wasted but good and some of the dialogue will need subtitles to anybody unfamiliar with the slang and street talk.