Like certain kinds of radiation, the influence of Guy Ritchie obviously has a long half-life. In 4. 3. 2. 1 the previously interesting filmmaker Noel Clarke – working here with Mark Davis – virtually ram raids the techniques that Ritchie himself had put to one side for Sherlock Holmes. The suggestion of social realism and a clear geographic identification with London’s vibrant but marginalised boroughs that marked 2006’s Kidulthood and its 2008 sequel Adulthood has been replaced by beer commercial camera tricks, furiously loud characters who never stop speaking but don’t say a thing, a cartoonish regard for the possibilities of violence and a belief that happenstance can reveal something about character.
Clarke and Davis have made a Ritchie film about teenage girls (don’t be fooled into thinking it’s for them) that splinters the narrative and puts it back together to reveal not a great deal; it even has the same crime as Ritchie’s Snatch – a gem robbery on the continent – as the story’s underpinning. Like Tarantino, Ritchie makes film about a world he derives from films, and 4. 3. 2. 1 is no different.
Cheeky, lippy and proud consumerists, teenagers Jo (Emma Roberts), Shannon (Ophelia Lovibond), Cassie (Tamsin Egerton) and Kerrys (Shanika Warren-Markland) are friends/Spice Girls II archetypes who meet at the film’s start and end, with the twist being the vastly different circumstances between the two encounters and the events that transpire over a long weekend in between. There is some self-conscious swearing (there goes the Nancy Drew franchise, Emma Roberts), but the bravado serves only to obscure for the young women what the audience can plainly see: Shannon is mired in depression.
When they go their separate ways, Shannon is the first to have her weekend episodically followed, and it’s a downwards march with her mother leaving her father, random abuse and three friends who barely acknowledge her. At this point 4. 3. 2. 1 has an odd, but intriguing tone (Mike Leigh with an electro-grime score), but once the narrative literally backtracks to pick up Cassie, a piano prodigy off to New York to audition for a teacher while meeting her internet sweetheart, the story goes off the rails. Soon she’s undressed, having sex, being drugged, tracking down various stalkers to tie them up and dealing with a Kevin Smith extended cameo.
Little signposts pop up, such as a conversation between two girls on the phone that you only hear the current subject’s side of, but the accumulation of detail doesn’t provide new perspectives, instead it just adds to the banal shenanigans. Kerrys is a proud lesbian in a large Brazilian immigrant family, and most of her half hour is spent semi-naked, in the company of her girlfriend. By the time it gets to Jo, who is now suddenly put upon (mainly so she can pick up a gun and have a speech about asserting herself) the story is dragging, with the addition of misplaced stolen diamonds that should be lodged with Jo’s corrupt convenience story supervisor, Tee (Clarke), just adding to the ludicrousness.
What are the filmmakers trying to say about young women in contemporary London? If it’s that the environment puts them under constant pressure, with the social and the sexual intermingling, then that’s an interesting theme, but if that pressure takes the form of evil crime gang villains or crazed b-boys who can’t even pull a stick-up off right then we’re not really in the realm of real life. Aside from the odd line that captures Clarke’s intent – 'boobs are stupid people or mistakes," points out Kerrys – the young women in this story are most at threat from the male sexual gaze represented by the filmmaker’s camera. The story keeps them undressed and the camera gorges on their bare skin.
The final insult, when the story returns to Shannon, is that a big hug and a collective makeover so they can walk towards the camera in swaggering slow motion like supermodels is considered all the help she needs. Note to Jean-Luc Godard: 4. 3. 2., 1 has girls and guns, but it’s barely a movie.
