GameAndWatch I'm pretty bored of gritty drug dramas, but thankful that I didn't pass this one up.In short the film follows the day in the life of a dealer: Shifty and his best friend Chris. Chris left Shifty high and dry and made a break for Manchester after a tragic event. And the beginning of the film sees his return to make reparations with his old friend. Chris used to be a dealer but is slowly building a future for himself. Shifty sells drugs. He earns plenty of money and is a slave to the job - but he's not living a champagne lifestyle or snorting his wares. Instead he's living a meagre existence. Travelling by foot to do drops and living with his brother Rez - under the pretence that he's a little lost and hopeless - which is wearing a little thin on his close family.In the following 24 hours, Chris tags alongside Shifty. Chris is witness to a pick up, some drops and the desperation of addiction while walking his old haunts. He advices Shifty to get out while he can. Both Chris and Shifty have some unresolved issues but their bondage triumphs. We see the scars, torment and betrayal wrought from both dealers and users, especially to those closest to them.The film is neither overtly violent, nor does it glorify drug use, or drug careers. Quite the opposite. There's a few small laughs thrown in. It is not a laugh a minute like Adam and Paul, Trainspotting or Pulp Fiction. It is however a little uncomfortable to watch, mainly because it's depressingly familiar. I found myself wishing the characters out of their dead end and empty lives.Sadly I couldn't find any love in my heart for Shifty, wanting to see some morsel of remorse for his crimes. On the other hand Chris I forgave early on. Both Chris and Rez were both likable.I can't help but like Daniel Mays, his face is just fantastic. Nitin Ganatra is wonderful and Riz Ahmed is flawless. I'm not sure if the film could have worked without any of them. I'd like to see them all in something a little more jolly!This can't have been the easiest script to act, but all parties do so with aplomb. Great pace, great cast, great shots - a cohesive love laboured piece of artistry.

gradyharp This little gritty film, written and directed by Eran Creevy, is being cleverly marketed for release in the US by Breaking Glass Pictures as a prescription form for drugs and nothing could be more appropriate for a film that examines the intricate manner drugs such as cocaine, crack, etc have on little sectors of England: here, instead of London, the story is set in a seedy East London/Essex border country where drugs seem to affect everyone in one way or the other.A bright, well-schooled Muslim lad named Shifty (Riz Ahmed, in a very fine performance) who lives with his straight mature brother Rez (Nitin Ganatra) who only tries to keep his Muslim family together. Shifty is a young crack cocaine dealer with a regular clientèle - a addicted building site worker Trevor (Jay Simpson) married to a disillusioned wife (who thought he had given up drugs) with three kids, a crack smoking old lady Valerie (Francesca Annis) in her familiar looking flat, framed photograph of a daughter, grand daughter on the mantle. etc. Shifty sees his life quickly spiral out of control when his best friend Chris (Daniel Mays) returns home after an absence of several years due to a dark secret that we only learn about at film's end. Stalked by a customer desperate to score at all costs, and with his family about to turn their back on him for good, Shifty must out-run and out-smart a rival drug dealer Glen (Jason Flemyng) intent on setting him up for a big fall. As his long time friend Chris, confronts the dark past he left behind him (nightmares abound!), Shifty is forced to face up to the violent future he's hurtling towards. And oddly it is the presence of Chris that finally, after years of remorse over a bad decision, is there for Shifty.Much of what makes this little film work so well is the writer/director's decision to make this a series of character studies than a series of mayhem scenes. Yes, there are brutal scenes that represent the drug world as it functions on all levels, but in the final analysis it is the story of the people reacting to the drug culture - dealers, family, druggies, victims, friends, and children of all these. It is a very potent little film. The only disadvantage is that there (at this time) are no subtitles, and the various forms of English accents are at times not understandable. This is a powerful little film that delves more deeply than other films about the drug culture and its impact on society. Grady Harp,

thebogofeternalstench I've noticed this growing trend with a lot of British gangster and drama films that claim to be 'gritty and realistic' but are no where near it.Shifty suffers from the same flaws. I'm sorry, but even the lower class of British society doesn't say 'yeh bruv' or 'mug' etc every other sentence, its so stereotypical and bloody over done.It seems also, that Daniel Mays is a one dimensional 'actor', but really, he can't act to save his life. He has one of the most irritating faces to look at and permanently looks retarded. To me, he sounds EXACTLY like Danny Dyer, another bloke who thinks he can act. How he got a part in anything to do with Mike Leigh is beyond me.Riz Ahmed however seems like a very capable actor but was given a completely $hit script to work with.The whole film is just so uninteresting. I thought there would be some action and meaning to the story, but at end its like the viewer is supposed to clap their hands at Shifty's clever little stints he did to get out of his spot of bother.Also, if he made 3 grand a week being a drug dealer, would he really be living in that $hitty flat/house with his older, old fashioned brother? I doubt it.Another disappointing, clichéd British film.

Ali Catterall Shifty is being hailed in some quarters as an early contender for best British film of 2009 - a double-edged blessing for any debut, which can rarely hope to live up to the hype, however well intentioned. Shifty isn't the second coming, the one true saviour of UK independent cinema. But it's a very decent little crime thriller, with a lot of heart, that deserves more than a couple of weeks at the repertory before being marooned on DVD.Chris (Daniel Mays) returns from Manchester to the (fictional) outer London suburb of Dudlowe after four years in white-collared exile. To his surprise, he discovers his old school mate Shifty (Riz Ahmed), the "smart kid in class, four A-levels", has since transformed from a part-time weed merchant into a full blown crack dealer.Over the next 24 hours, the country mouse accompanies the town mouse on his rounds, supplying everyone from middle-class hippies to dead eyed kids, while being stalked by an increasingly agitated Trevor (Jay Simpson), a broken family man prepared to take his next fix by any means necessary. (Shifty must be selling some uncommonly good gear.) Meanwhile his brother Rez (Nitin Ganatra) is about to kick him out of his house, and double-crossing supplier Glen (Jason Flemyng) is setting him up for a fall. Can Chris convince Shifty to abandon his life at the crack face before he comes a cropper? 'Shifty' sounds like an ITV comedy drama from the late 1960s or early 1970s, no doubt starring Hywel Bennett or Adam Faith as its eponymous lovable rogue; up to no good, but more victim than predator - and that's pretty much the case here. An ocean away from The Wire's corner boys, Baltimore's tooled-up foot soldiers marinated in murder, Shifty's scrappy pushers embody a familiar kind of hapless Englishness; the sort who might shut up shop for a day, owing to the wrong kind of snow on the road. Yet for all its lively banter ("I can't believe you just sold crack to Miss Marple and struck a deal with Blazin' Squad") the film is no quirky apologia for crime. This is the pedestrian reality of drug abuse: people hurting themselves in small rooms.All the cast are terrific, playing real three-dimensional characters, but actor-musician Riz Ahmed is standout as the titular live wire, utterly nailing the dealer's temporal mindset. He might look as if he's physically occupying a scene, but he's not really there at all - his eyes tell us he's already on the next page, a parasitic tick, eternally leaping from host to host.Writer-director Eran Creevy drew his inspiration from a former school friend, an A-grade pupil who discovered he could make more money in the real world by dealing drugs. Not for Shifty being "stuck in a warehouse, knocking out dodgy Fruit Of The Loom". Had things worked out differently, we can easily imagine him popping up on 'The Apprentice', back-chatting Sir Alan.Creevy eschews the woozy, art-house ambiance of Duane Hopkins' Better Things - another portrait of a drug-decimated community - for naturalistic dialogue and performances within carefully framed and composed shots; properly cinematic, grown-up direction. Though we never get the impression we're watching a wildly original cinematic voice, it's refreshing to encounter a film featuring gritty, 'urban' subject matter that hasn't been shot with a hyperventilating DV camera.This relative stillness and subtlety gives rise to moments of exceptional power. During one scene, Shifty delivers to posh, pensionable hippie Valerie (Francesca Annis), in a grimy council flat littered with Moroccan tat and dead, stiff cats. It is safe to assume this is a long way from where she imagined she was going to end up. After everybody has had a nice cup of tea, Chris and Shifty hunch embarrassedly on the opposite sofa in silence, while Valerie gratefully sucks on the pipe, gently collapsing back into her chair, as muffled, moronic techno from the flat upstairs leaks through the ceiling into the room.Such damn fine film-making reflects well on Shifty's sponsor, the Microwave project, which gives aspiring UK indie filmmakers a chance, a mentor, and some money to help realise their dreams. The catch: they have to turn their movie around in just 18 days on a budget of £100,000. While everyone, from caterers to star actors are paid the same, inducing a more democratic vibe on set. Heathrow horror Mum & Dad, released on Boxing Day 2008, was the first film to be made under the scheme. Shifty is the second. There are eight more to come.