What a film ! The best the Film Club has yet shown. A portrayal of London - not the soap opera image of 'Eastenders' that raises issues and deals superficially with them - but the raw, passionate, violent turmoil that the lives of people who live in the worst of grim council blocks in the roughest of areas and the tragedies they too often become.

The downward spiral of crime, drug addiction and domestic violence is exposed with honesty and compassion. The film shows people who display a capacity for enjoyment, strong ties of friendship and family, love of children and animals, but....people who can never rise above the situation that has turned in on them since birth; a society for whom it is easier to make a living outside the law than within it.

The harshness of the struggle to exist is corrosive, tempers fray and love flounders and as drunkeness gives way to jealous rage with brutal consequences the audience is forced to understand why. When Kathy returns to the husband who wrecked their home and brutally attacked her, we have already been told that for them, the alternative - involvement with the Police, the Welfare and homes for battered women, maybe even the loss of the child - would be worse. This is the thing that keeps the family together. They can laugh and hope in the times between the bad times which we are left knowing will inevitably happen again. Prison has no stigma for these people - they've been there before. Drugs the same. Bill's mum hates and fears her son's drug addiction yet, far from condemning him, she recognises his need and works to pay for his £60 a day habit. Later he's taken off the stuff in prison, but we have been told by Ray that anything you can get outside prison you can get inside, so we know as they do, that there's no escape.

At each and every point in the film we are given enough information to render the tragedies understandable. A great first film writing/directing achievement for Gary Oldman and his actors. By comparison Ken Loach's idealism seems quaint and Tarentino's violence, unnecessary.