Film review: Shifty

Published on Thursday 23 April 2009 19:41

**** (15) DIRECTED BY: ERAN CREEVY STARRING: RIZ AHMED, DANIEL MAYS, JASON FLEMYNG

A LOW-BUDGET urban Britflick about a small-time drug dealer sounds like heart-sinking stuff, so all credit to Shifty writer/director Eran Creevy for transforming potentially derivative material into such a gripping and absorbing debut. Made as part of Film London's innovative Microwave scheme – devised to showcase new British film-making talent by giving worthy candidates a shoestring 100,000 budget with which to make a feature – Creevy has turned in an efficient, well-crafted drama that shares some DNA with the brilliant London to Brighton, not least in the way it subverts expectations about what a film like this can achieve. Set on a fictional London estate, it follows 24 increasingly dangerous hours in the life of a drug dealer called Shifty (Riz Ahmed), whose sorted-on-the-outside lifestyle begins to unravel just as his gone-respectable best friend Chris (Daniel Mays) returns after a four-year absence.

Terrifically acted, and with perceptive observations about race, class, family and economics woven unobtrusively into a story peppered with plenty of wit and palpable menace, the end result is a tightly-structured, hard-working thriller with a raw feel for character and place, and an optimistic outlook on the need for friendship and taking responsibility for one's actions.