The score for the British alien-invasion comedy Attack the Block (2011, Joe Cornish) (opening 7/29 in limited release) is by Steven Price, who nimbly mixes hip-hop influences with the recognizable sounds of synth-heavy '80s genre-movie music. Pity, then, that the film itself fails to pull off a similar mix of old-school sci-fi and contemporary gangsta-culture edge.
Of course, it would be reductive and offensive to blame the fact that writer-director Cornish is white for his inability to deliver on the latter, but his race does become a factor when examining how glaringly problematic his film's representational politics are. By populating Attack the Block with a group of mostly black teenage characters who live in a public housing project, it's clear that Cornish wants his movie, on some level, to be a corrective to the regrettably white-washed, class-ignorant genre fare Hollywood is currently offering up (you can almost hear the studio executives behind Captain America, for example, asking themselves, "hey, if we put Derek Luke onscreen for 20 seconds, that counts as multi-racial, right?"). But Cornish is so inept when it comes to characterization that every person of color onscreen comes off as a troubling stereotype instead of a flesh-and-blood human being (the black characters include a gold-toothed drug dealer who whips out his pistol at the slightest provocation and the dealer's overweight, bumbling, Fetchit-level-comic-relief henchman--believe me, I'm not making this up).
Cornish also has the misguided audacity to open Attack the Block with a scene in which the film's ostensible heroes assault and steal from an innocent white woman, Sam (Jodie Whittaker). So right off the bat, he correlates black, lower-class masculinity with ugly intimidation and misogyny, associations that he's not smart enough to debunk as the movie goes on. But, for anyone looking to give him a pat on the back for effort, it should be noted he does try to debunk them, kind of. As soon as sharp-fanged aliens start slamming into the asphalt like miniature asteroids, the teenage muggers and Sam are forced to team up to survive in a characters-on-both-sides-of-the-law-vs.-a-common-enemy set-up straight out of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. But, as would be the case with any movie that fails to produce a single three-dimensional character, the intended moral ambiguity inherent in that set-up never achieves proper human weight. At one point, the stereotypically sassy female friend of the thieves' stereotypically sullen ringleader, Moses (John Boyega, who resembles the young Denzel Washington; hopefully one day, a better script will come along to test if he has any of Washington's talent and charisma), chastises Moses for the mugging of Sam, which may be enough for some to excuse the film's minefield of race and gender issues. However, when, just 20 or so minutes later, Cornish shows the thieves making creepy passes at Sam and Moses clarifying to Sam that he wouldn't have robbed her if he had known she lived in the same housing project as him (oh, so mugging non-natives is fine and dandy then), it's clear that the filmmaker just can't keep from tripping over his representational-political feet, as it were.
Okay, so putting aside those major political issues, does Attack the Block at least work as a simple humans-vs.-aliens action-thriller? Only in fits and starts, sadly. There's a race to get into the protective housing project that makes fun use of parkour leaps, and the climax is a superficially badass slo-mo treat. But all too often, Cornish and editor Jonathan Amos dice the action into incoherent, sadistic bursts of gleaming-alien-teeth close-ups, geysers of blood, and loud noises.
The shrill volume extends to the ensemble cast, who seem to have been directed to shout their lame, juvenile one-liners at an eardrum-shattering level.
Mystifyingly, Attack the Block has played at film festivals like the Los Angeles Film Festival and Austin's South by Southwest to a generally positive audience reception. Honestly, the only way I can imagine anyone over the age of 12 finding it genuinely good is if that potential viewer either likes any contemporary genre movie bearing the unmistakable Carpenter influence or any action movie centered on a black, lower-class protagonist. If you belong to either or both of those camps, have at it, I guess. Grade: C-
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