Idris Elba directs Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson and Stephen Graham in this crime drama about a young gangster travelling from Jamaica to London and figuring out whether he wants a life of domesticity or revenge.

Here’s a film that on googling it after watching I was surprised it hadn’t done better. Mixed reviews and lacklustre box office when it was genuinely good? The highbrows might criticise Yardie for sticking too close to its unrefined source material. There are characters and subplots that are basic and dated. The three soundclash kids could easily come from an 80s kid show like Grange Hill. Fair points. And Joe Public expecting a movie called Yardie to be carnage filled, might be disappointed that the violence is only occasional and subdued. I see that. But these are minor niggles given the film’s strengths. The feel and sounds of both period locations are evoked vibrantly and seductively. You experience the heat of Kingston, the threat of the wet Brixton pavements, and the smoky wail of the underground club scenes. Idris is to thank for this. He has a keen eye, a zealot’s eye, for detail. His squats and his shanty towns and his backrooms feel true. As do his support characters. Stephen Graham delivers a dozy of a villian. Danger exudes from his interactions, you feel the unstableness of his mental state as he slips from welcoming to tyrant, patois into thick Brit accent. A whirlwind of nasty schizophrenia. Shantol Jackson stands out as the childhood love trying to make a peaceful life in the smoke. Aml Ameen has a trickier job. His protagonist, D, is unfixed, every other scene seems to see him making a conflicting moral choice. Swerving between peace and crime. But isn’t that refreshing? To see a character in a crime drama not just following the Goodfellas template of rise and fall. In most gangster films, once the innocent gives into corruption he gets worse or becomes a bystander to behaviour even he cannot stomach. In Yardie, our lead carries on trying to untangle himself. Sometimes doing the right thing, other times unleashing his own demons. Elba’s aggressive direction matches that turmoil. His camera jerks and shakes and glides with the action. As the world of Yardie moves you, his vision matches the pace. It is a film whose soundtrack, unpredictability, sensitivity and world building make we want to revisit it soon, it is directorial debut that promises great things for Idris’ next project.

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