Ikea Knightley killed in tragic wooden flat top kitchen table accident... (Pure (DVD))

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Pure (DVD)
Date:	09/12/08 (186 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good lead from the kid..

Disadvantages: Ikea Knightley

British film is usually dependant on one of two topics: grim life on a council estate or Merchant & Ivory bodice ripping action in a big country house with lots of big hats and randy servants, Keira Knightley, of course, the darling of the later right now, the new Helena Bonham Carter if you like, fitting much snugger into those corsets these days. But before she had earned the Golden Bonnet she had to start somewhere in film, 'Pure', the unfortunate effort, a very bad dose of 'Estuary' English coming out of her 'boat race' here.

To say Ikea Knightley is an awful actress is unfair as she really is just a fashion model that never was the fashion model she really should have been first, and then gone into movies like Cameron Diaz, coat hanger mouth Julia Roberts and the incredibly irritating Andi Mc Dowell did, instead of going straight into acting from art school. Her awful performance in the brilliant Bend it Like Beckham was her gravestone to that premature decision. But she has improved of late as we saw in the enjoyable Pirates trilogy and Atonement so it would only be fair to write this one off as experience, so wooden a turn she sounded like a chair being thrown across an empty warehouse. Keira Knightley does not do working class Londoners well.

This film, of course, is not really about Knightley, here just a supporting role in a perfunctory tale of drug abuse, single mums, and prostitution and crack babies in East London, a well trodden tale in British film. No, the star of this one is ten-year-old Harry Eden, brilliant as the schoolboy who has to learn quickly to fend for himself and his junkie mom on those tough Hackney streets, another family let down by their infamous social services.

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Paul: "Drugs make peoples lives s**t".
Dealer: " No, their lives are already shit. Drugs just help people forget about that fact,"
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-The Cast-

Harry Eden ... Paul
Vinnie Hunter ... Lee
Molly Parker ... Mel
David Wenham ... Lenny
Nitin Ganatra ... Abu
Levi Hayes ... Jack
Keira Knightley ... Louise
Rupert Procter ... Harry
Bronson Webb ... Tom
Marsha Thomason ... Vicki
Geraldine McEwen ... Nanna
Tyler Smart ... Rose
Karl Johnson ... Grandad

-The Plot-

Paul (Harry Eden) is a good kid and looks after his little baby brother and his sick mum Mel (Molly Parker), two years after his dads unexplained death [in the movie] has left them alone. Paul is naive to the fact her sickness is heroine, something he can't grasp, even when his school friends call her a junkie to his face. The days of the family going to watch West Ham together on Saturday seem another life, something Paul longs for the return of. But when Mel's best friend Vicki (Marsha Thompson) OD`s in the flat Paul grasps the obvious that his mom isn't the saint he thought she was.
Her wide-boy pusher Lee (Vinnie Hunter) and his sidekick Abu (Nitin Ganatra) are regulars in that flat, determined to keep her hooked, a good client in a clean house, the social workers oblivious to it all (as usual).

The matriarch of the family is Grandmother Rose (Tyler Smart), she and grandad (Karl Johnson) determined to remove the boys from her custody, all too aware of her nasty habit. But little Paul is determined to help his mom get through it, she promising to come off the smack and go cold turkey, meaning Paul has to lock mum in the bedroom for a week and keep everyone away from her, especially Lee. During the lockdown he finds solace with chirpy café waitress Louise (Knightly), also emotionally estranged from her parents and living alone, drugs also her only friend. Everyone on the state seems to be either dealing, using or on the game. But Paul must now gather the fear that's building in the pit of his stomach and do something: having lost his father he may now lose his mother.

-The Conclusion-

I think it's fair to say that this is a cliché driven drama, the dialogue as blunt as a junkies needle and the narrative as simple as most users. At times the narrative really does bludgeon you with that cliché. At least it doesn't assault your ears with that ubiquitous 'banging' dance music soundtrack this druggy genre seems to overdose on.

Knightley is dire and Molly Hunter as mom isn't a lot better to be honest, adding little to their drug dependant roles other than more of that stale ham that's in every bass-heads warm fridge. When scriptwriters tackle this indie film truism I want to see something different - something bold, why Trainspotting is so bloody good, why this is boring. Its like an Eastenders special Christmas edition. Not one of these actresses have bothered to lose weight and posses that purposeful emaciated gate heroine addicts are known for and have put about as much effort into the film as junkies do to find work. Being the skinny tart Kiera is I'm surprised she didn't exploit that and go for the lead role. She even looks like a syringe! For a film that's talked up in many reputable film books and on websites this really was a big disappointment. Pure junk!

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Imdb.com scores it 7.0 out of 10.0(959 votes)
RuN-TiMe 96 minutes
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Summary: Underclass Cliche....