TwentyFourSeven is another low-budget British film which, like The Full Monty and Brassed Off, deals with the crippling effect of unemployment on a community.
Shane Meadows` first feature film, shot in black and white in the Midlands city of Nottingham, stars Bob Hoskins as the ebullient Darcy, who persuades a group of aimless kids to join his boxing club (the plot has parallels with Jim Sheridan`s The Boxer). Darcy trains the youngsters, and also takes them off on a field trip to the Welsh countryside.
This gritty little film accentuates the positive as it explores, yet again, the effect on blighted Britain of years of Thatcherism. Hoskins is at his best as the immensely likeable Darcy, and the young cast of little-known actors who support him are all terrific. The characters here are real, not movie confections, and Meadows - presumably under the influence of Ken Loach - makes them memorable, thanks to plenty of moments of rare, well-observed insight, and lashings of working-class humour.
Twenty Four Seven refers to working around the clock, seven days a week.
