NEDS Released 21 January 2011 Director Peter Mullan Starring Conor McCarron, Steven Robertson, Peter Mullan Writer(s) Peter Mullan Producer(s) Olivier Delbosc, Alain de la Mata, Marc Missonnier Origin Scotland Running Time 124 minutes Genre Drama Rating 18

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Gangs of Glasgae!

Peter Mullan has built an interesting career for himself. For a long time he was a bit part player in the likes of Braveheart, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. However he made a breakthrough in 1998 when he won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his role as a recovering alcoholic in Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe. Around the same time, he made his directorial debut with Orphans, a darkly funny tale of a dysfunctional Glaswegian family.

He followed this up in 2002 with an Irish film, The Magdalene Sisters, about the abuse of young Irish women in institutional care in the sixties. It was an angry, controversial piece of work that stirred up quite a bit of debate. He’s waited until now to follow it up and he does so with his most personal work to date. Neds (Non-Educated Delinquents) follows John as he grows up in a tough Glasgow area in the seventies.

We first meet John as a young boy (played by Gregg Forrest) as he’s about to move up to senior school. He’s an altar boy and a good student but then a local bully threatens him. Frightened, he reaches out to his older brother Benny, a local hard man who’s already left the family home. Benny deals with the bully quite viciously and young John gets his first taste of the power of violence. John goes to school where he is marked out as a star pupil by his odd but well-meaning teacher (Steven Robertson).

The years pass and when we next meet John, he’s grown into a chunky teenager (Conor McCarron). On his summer holidays he makes a middle-class friend, but the friend’s snobby mother rejects him. Feeling alienated by this, he then encounters a local gang who initially try to rob him, but then stop when they realise who his older brother is. The gang befriend him and John begins to enjoy the notoriety of being in with the tough boys. Back at school he begins to rebel against his teachers and his studies start to suffer. He gets into some minor scrapes at first but then develops into a psychotic and begins a real downward spiral. He gets more and more dangerous and commits one particularly sickening act of senseless violence that has dire repercussions for the victim.

This is a tough film about gang culture and knife crime, a problem that still haunts Glasgow to this day. Mullan never soft-soaps anything by presenting John as a victim of being led astray. John is smart enough to know the consequences of his actions but he enjoys the power of his violent ways. However he continues on his path regardless until he finally realises the journey he’s on is doomed. There is no easy and safe redemption at the end though, instead there is an ambiguous and slightly surreal finale.

Though this is a dark and unflinching tale there is also quite a bit of humour, though admittedly of the jet-black variety. The pitiful bravado of the gangs is shown up as they mostly spend time chasing other gangs and in turn being chased themselves. There are some hilarious moments such as when a delirious glue-sniffing John is confronted with a statue of Jesus come to life, which he promptly gets into a fight with. There is also the school trip to a wildlife park where the coach breaks down. As one of the boys nonchalantly leans on the bonnet of the coach smoking a cigarette, an incredulous warden approaches and shouts at him that there are lions roaming about. “Ach, don’t worry, we won’t touch your bloody lions!!” replies the boy.

Mullan is helped by the superb performances of his largely unknown cast. Three of his old collaborators from My Name is Joe and Orphans, David McKay, Gary Lewis and Stephen McCole make very funny cameos and Mullan takes a role himself, playing John’s abusive, alcoholic father (very much based on Mullan’s own father). However, the majority of the young cast are first-time actors drawn from open auditions that Mullan held in Glasgow. Mullan’s great achievement is the superbly natural performances he’s coaxed from his cast, especially Conor McCarron as the teenage John.

McCarron gives an astonishingly good performance for a first-time actor. Under-playing everything, there’s no dramatic shift in personality just a slow but steady change as the character becomes more and more menacing. Despite his horrendous actions, he never totally loses the sympathy of the audience. It marks him down as a talent to watch out for.

This is one of the great British contemporary films, up there with Trainspotting and This is England. It deserves a massive audience so do yourself a favour and go and see it!

- Jim O’Connor