Cheap Nil by Mouth (DVD) (Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Charlie Creed-Miles) (Gary Oldman) Price

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Customer Reviews of Nil by Mouth

Basically the film is about a family in South London. Their everyday life is not exactly the sunniest (to say the very least). The focal characters are Billy, a teenager with a horrible heroine addiction, Ray, a middle age man, who drinks and fights and beats his pregnant wife, Valerie, Billy's sister. And that is what the film is about.

This an interesting film. It is very anti-Hollywood. There is no real narrative structure to it. The film begins and ends with the characters being presented at no particularly significant places in their lives. Their is no rising action, or climax, but this is not to say that this film does not deliver several defining moments for the characters. None harder to watch then Ray beating Valerie and then destroying their flat in a drunken rage.

The performances in this film are amazing. Oldman has presented them in their environment, without judgement, and the results are so effective. Especially Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke (Ray and Valerie). These two actors deliver some of the most devastatingly realistic characters strugling internally, against their family, and against each other. The supporting cast does not miss a beat either.

Gary Oldman wrote and directed this film. He is from South London and curiously dedicated the film to his own father. This raisied an eyebrow from me. Indeed this film is so brutally real it could almost pass for a documentary. A truely impressive film.

Can't Help Lovin' That Man...
"Nil by Mouth" is a movie that takes its sweet time to get going. In the beginning, it's filled with too many characters and dialogues that don't seem very relevant. But once it gets going... Boy, does it ever get going. It's a brutally honest and disturbing look at domestic violence, drug abuse and poverty, and while it's very difficult to watch at times, it's also extremely gripping. The two leads, Kathy Burke and Ray Winstone, are absolutely phenomenal in portraying characters that are much more complex than just a victim and an abuser (the exchange between the apologetic Ray and angry Val after Ray had beaten up Val for the umpteenth time, and Ray's monologue about his own abusive father, are two of the most memorable and powerful movie moments in recent memory), and the supporting cast (including Gary Oldman's sister Laila Morse in her debut) is superb as well. I think the movie's subplot about Billy the junkie ("Trainspotting" without the humor, if you will) gets perhaps a little over developed though. It is integral to the main story line, but it becomes too distracting at times.

Gary Oldman does a tremendous job in his directorial debut. The script seems very authentic, probably because most of the characters and the events in the movie are taken from his own experiences, and his cinema vérité style (minus the shaky camera, thank God) suits the grittiness and honesty of the film extremely well. The music is also excellent throughout. I know I'll never listen to "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" the same way ever again, that's for sure.

It's something different
When i first saw this movie in the store i thought it was just some kind of movie with just violence and language but when you see it it's something different for a change a family selling drugs