4.3.2.1. Reviews

This is a film that is skewed towards young people. The language, the soundtrack and the attitude are all young. If you believe that "age is just a number" then don't let that put you off. It's an enjoyable ride from start to finish. The film is split into 4 sections that tell the story of Shannon, Cassandra, Kerrys and Jo bringing the viewer to the point the film starts. Each of the 4 sections intertwine, yet each tells a different tale that when pieced together forms the story. It's a brave approach and it works well. The film is well written and well acted. It's well shot too, the video and the score as as high energy as the plot. It contains plenty of faces from British TV programmes and while it's all a bit of a fantasy world, some of the characters and situations will be identifiable. The ending is a little tame for what came before it. Also, the cinema warning of "Strong language, violence, sex and drugs" is a bit OTT. The violence was sparse and quick. The drugs almost none existent. Well done, Noel Clarke. This is another promising building block in your career.

Given that Emma Roberts has been dabbling in typically young movies for years now, I was interested to see how she would be in a movie that's a bit more mature and maybe worthy of her talents. Unfortunately, while 4.3.2.1 may have promised that, it certainly isn't mature or worthy of her talents. No, it's just a reason for it's predominantly female cast to get their clothes off instead of being the gritty crime thriller it could have been.

While Jo (Emma Roberts) is chained down in a dead end supermarket job, her friends are all out on their own separate adventures: Cassandra (Tamsin Egerton) is jetting off to New York to meet her Internet boyfriend; Kerrys (Shanika Warren-Markland) is on a one woman crusade fighting for female liberation and Shannon (Ophelia Lovibond) is on a one way trip to meet her maker. But a chance encounter with some diamond thieves sends their separate worlds on a collision course with not only each other, but fate itself.

I did actually enjoy this movie. I thought the story logistics were all well in place, and the way it was executed was brilliantly done. The film starts off with a brief introduction to our four leading characters, and then spins off into telling their seperate stories, one by one. Shannon's story was a good place to start, since it was so depressing, but mixed into that were the beginnings off a crime thriller that never quite lifted off after that. Admittedly, by the time it got to the fourth story, which was Jo's, I felt a little tired out by everything that had happened, and I just wanted them to tie up the loose ends as fast as they could and end the movie. That's the problem with these multi plot films...there is always one story (in this case Shannon's) that is better than all the rest, and the other stories usually leave me feeling a little empty because of that. Cassandra's storyline was a little unbelievable but served as a great warning to those with internet 'boyfriends'; Kerrys didn't really have a storyline and was just running around trying to save the world and take a piece out of everyone else; and Jo's storyline, while somewhat interesting (a dodgy dealer at work...most of us can relate to that), was just a tad predictable and shallow.