Yardie

‘As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a yardie’. No character in Yardie says this line, yet Idris Elba’s directorial debut echoes Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas with its tale of the rites of passage through criminal syndicates. With its period detail and tactile sense of time and place, Elba’s adaptation of Victor Headley’s novel immerses the viewer in its milieu, its use of London also recalling David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, with an added Jamaican flavour. The narrative includes familiar genre tropes of revenge, redemption, how one defines identity and the tensions between men being men and women being sensible. The theme of immigration adds a distinctive element to the film, as Jamaican culture feeds both the yardie mentality and a non-criminal lifestyle. Elba handles the interpersonal drama effectively, allowing a very impressive cast to shine. Elba also displays confidence and flair as a director, especially with such devices as freeze frames and non-sequential editing. Various sequences begin, continue and end, but key moments from these sequences appear and reappear later, often with additional detail. This emphasises the film’s conceits of trauma and haunting, as our protagonist Dennis (Aml Ameen) is psychologically trapped in a formative moment, an experience that he cannot escape even when his location changes from Kingston to London. As the film follows Dennis’ progress, there is a constant sense of enclosure, demonstrated with claustrophobic framing and close quarters. The one avenue for escape comes from music, brilliantly realised with an atmospheric soundtrack, that takes centre stage at key points. These include an attempt at an armistice between warring gangs, and later as a possible road to redemption for Dennis. Yet the musical and the criminal pathways are intertwined, and Dennis’ status remains fluid and liminal. Come the end of the film, the viewer is likely to feel ambivalent, which is a sign of the film’s strength. Not only is it worth seeing in its own right, but Yardie raises expectations for what Elba may do next.

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