Dir. George Amponsah (2023)
A young criminal trying to support his mother and sister finds himself deep into a crime syndicate run by a charismatic Albanian.
It's really easy to get caught up in believing in the view that crime comes from criminals, that societal ne'er-do-wells fall into that category strictly from their poor life choices. It's much harder to remember, and even harder to rectify, that they are placed into their roles in life because of the very societies from which they spring. Ash (Stephen Odubola) is a criminal because of lack of choices, forced to raise his sister and provide for his drug-addicted mother because he's the only thing either of them have. What else is he supposed to do? What other choices does he have, short of letting his young sister fend for herself, or hope that his mother eventually finds her own way out of the hole that she's dug for herself? When you put things into this kind of perspective, outside of the understanding of people who have never had to deal with things like that, it becomes harder to maintain the status quo point of view that so many people have. Things aren't so simple, and they never were, regardless of the beliefs of people who never lived in that world to begin with.
It's in this context that Gassed Up, the new crime drama from director George Amponsah, begins. Ash and his friends Dubz (Taz Skylar), Roach (Craige Middleburg), Kabz (Mohammad Mansaray), and Mole (Tobias Jowett) are motorcycle thieves, tooling around London stealing whatever they can get their hands on from unsuspecting victims. Ash wants to put his mother into rehab, and he wants to take care of his sister until he can get his mom right. He dreams of being able to live a different life, one in which he is able to make money by being famous and desired in one way or another. His pursuit of wealth, or just an escape, leads him further into the criminal underworld, where things are much harder to balance than he imagines. Violence, crime, and betrayal all come together to form Ash's entire reality, forcing him to try to find a new way forward lest he fall even farther than where he started.
The social inequality causes of crime, as well as the situations that young people are put in because of the choices of the older generations, are on full display in Gassed Up. It's an excellent film about the real Britain from the perspective of those without a choice and with no way out, a UK sendup of movies like Boyz n tha Hood or Do the Right Thing. It's modern teenagers by way of Scorsese, crime drama that feels as hopeless to the viewers as it does to the characters. You know that it's building to something bad, and you're as powerless to stop it as they are. By the time things are completely out of Ash's control, we can see the train wreck for what it is, and he begins to see it as well.
Gassed Up is a really well-made film, and each of the actors does a fantastic job with their roles. Odubola is the star of the show, and I could easily see him getting bigger roles in the future. Amponsah is a very talented filmmaker, and it's easy to see the ties of previous crime films present all throughout the film. I always struggle a bit to understand the accent in British films, and this one is no different, especially with the slang used by the characters, but it is a hyper-realistic crime flick that really presents a slice of life in what is a very dangerous life indeed.
Reality is sometimes dark. For some people, their entire lives reflect this darkness because of things that are completely out of their control. Add to this the societal pressure to fit in, to advance your station, to grab ahold of what you can by whatever means necessary, and you have a recipe for disaster. It's a sad thing that so many people in our world live like this every day, and it's difficult for those of us who were born into privileged positions to really quantify it. Sometimes it's good to get a view of lives that are outside of our own, if just to understand why things happen the way that they do. So many of us live our lives assuming that we understand without having any basis for understanding, and it's never a bad thing to present reality in a way that will make us reconsider our own uninformed perspectives. Gassed Up does that, and it does it very well.
Who this movie is for: Crime drama lovers, British drama fans, Criminology majors
Bottom line: I love crime dramas, and Gassed Up is a good one. It's deeper than that, though, a picture of a society that exists for so many outside the understanding of those who don't live in that same world. Rather than portray these criminals as evil people, or people who are making choices in a vacuum, it humanizes them and tries to show why they ended up here rather than just how. I definitely recommend the film for fans of the genre, but it's a movie that really helps to understand this world for anyone.
