I’m pretty sure I was aware of this film when it was first released and seem to recall thinking that the initial premise was somewhat ridiculous and so not worth seeing. But having now seen it after a recommendation as an ‘undiscovered gem’ on Netflix, I realise I was completely wrong.
The central character is a teenager living on a very run-down drug-gang-infested estate in the middle of London surrounded by the millionaires working around him (the Gherkin is a prominent visual landmark in the scenes at the boys’ flat). His drug-addict mother died when he was very young and he is being brought up by his grandmother (father unknown although an intriguing possibility os floated right at the very end) and when fleeing from finding a girl friend of his being raped and filmed by a gang, he is shot while making an emergency phone call. He survives but phone fragments lodge in his brain and he can subsequently ‘tap in to’ all phone calls and the internet and ‘male things happen’ eg the electronic transfer of money. He uses this skill to start to take revenge on the gang who attacked his girl but with consequences he does not always foresee.
This outline might sound somewhat absurd but the depiction of the boy, a good indication of the life and place that he comes from, makes it much more than a hi-tech thriller. A good amount of time and script is given to thoughtful explorations as to what it is to live in that sort of environment and what the opportunities are for people who live there. And his ‘ordinary’ life at school - he is in the process of sitting his GVSE’s is an important part of the story.
So, well worth seeing…