Baseline

Although the traditional entries in the gangster movie genre are all American -- think The Godfather, Goodfellas, Once upon a Time in America, Scarface, Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, there is a fairly rich tradition of British gangster movies such as Brighton Rock, Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and Gangster No 1 so it is no surprise that this tradition continues to this day with films like Baseline. Adapted from the film The Grind by Rishi Opel, Baseline is set in the here and now and follows Danny, a bouncer in The Baseline, a club run by local hardcase and gangland boss Terry. Danny keeps accumulating money in small rolls which he locks away in his safe, keeping a running total of all of the backhanders and tips that is Terry puts his way.

It isn't long before Danny is asked to do more than just keep order in the club and becomes part of the main group that hangs around Terry, helping him do all of his dirty work such as killing or maiming rivals to send a message that he is not a man to be messed with. As is more or less traditional for a film like this, Danny moves up the ladder in the criminal underworld which he has tried so hard to avoid but, when he saved Terry from an assassin, his fate was sealed.

Danny tries to make his own way in the world, firstly as manager of The Baseline, having to turn a blind eye to the shady deals done by Terry's right-hand man, Joe, whilst trying to maintain a relationship with Jessica, a nurse who he met and instantly fell in love with. Everything was going well until Danny's former best friend Paul is released from jail with a grudge against Danny and a debt he has to pay to Terry. It isn't long before things come to a head and all ill feeling and previous bridges between Danny, Terry and Paul will be settled once and for all and, when this happens, not everyone is going to be happy.

With Jamie Foreman playing Terry, the film has an extremely recognisable figure as he tends to play these criminal types, and play them very well, as he did in Layer Cake and Nil By Mouth so the fact that he turns up here as a club owner and gangland boss is really no surprise and a piece of no-brainer casting. Dexter Fletcher, who plays Joe, is probably more known to people nowadays for his role in guy Ritchie's Mockney gangster flick Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels than for his early role in TV's Press Gang so, again, a piece of fairly predictable casting, as is that of Gary Stretch, another familiar face. The most interesting aspect of all of the cast members is Freddie Connor who I hadn't seen before in anything but, the IMDb informs me, that he has not really done anything of note prior to this as Baseline is only his fifth outing and a couple of those previous performances were in short films. Connor not only played the lead in this film, he was also a producer and one of the screenwriters so it is clearly a project that is very dear to him.


Britain intends to do these gritty urban crime thrillers pretty well and this outing by Brenda O'Loughlin is a welcome addition to the genre. It is by no means the greatest crime thriller you will ever see and it is certainly not up there with Gangster No 1 which is one of the finest British films of recent years but this does fit in quite well with other crime thrillers and it's certainly a step up from Guy Ritchie's 'Mockney' crime thrillers with all sorts of weird and wonderful 'geezers' who have an array of colourful names.

Baseline is certainly more believable and plausible than Ritchie's movies as it is a far more serious piece of work that doesn't have the comedy aspect that Ritchie's films do and is an extremely hard-hitting and well acted piece of work. It helps that the cast are pretty well used to appearing in a sort of film and delivering the sort of dialogue that has been written for them here and they all acquit themselves extremely well from Jamie Foreman all the way to Zoe Tapper, who most people will recognise as Anya from the recent BBC series Survivors.

This is a well made and very watchable film that should find a ready audience amongst those who like British gangster films and TV shows and are ready to give new films a try.

The Disc

Extra Features
When the disc loads you are greeted with skippable trailers for Perrier's Bounty, A Prophet and The Ghost before getting to the menu screen.

The interview with Freddie Connor (HD) runs at five minutes and is a fairly perfunctory piece that doesn't really get into much detail as interviewer Amina Hassam is perfectly happy to ask fairly bland questions and not really follow up and push for detail.

The only other extras are two trailers (both HD), a 'White' trailer and a 'Neon' trailer. Why the colours? Well, the trailers are identical (even presented in the wrong aspect ratio so they look squashed) but one has the titles in neon and the other in white -- simple!


The Picture
An extremely sharp and finely detailed transfer, presented in Full HD 1080p, with terrific image quality, vibrant colours and excellent contrast levels so you don't lose anything in the numerous low light scenes and those set in the club.

All of the sets and locations have been well scouted and really help to set the movie as presenting a fairly scummy and far from glamorous way of life where the wrong word could get you killed as these men operate in areas of London that you really wouldn't want to visit.

The Sound
You get the choice of an LPCM 2.0 stereo track or the full DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack. I went with the latter for the bulk of the movie and found it to be extremely well balanced, presenting the dialogue extremely well and establishing an enveloping soundstage which puts you right at the heart of the action. There is nothing at all shabby about the stereo option but it doesn't lose something when you are inside a club with the music pounding as nothing comes from the rear surrounds so you are left to concentrate on the dialogue rather than fully immerse yourself in the situation.


Final Thoughts
Baseline is an interesting and fairly well written gangster movie with good performances throughout and pretty functional, if unspectacular, direction by Brenda O'Loughlin. He doesn't fall into the Guy Ritchie trap of doing too much with the camera, allowing you to watch events unfold without being distracted by any variable frame rate or other such gimmicks. This is a very watchable film and, although it's a pity that there is no commentary or comprehensive making of documentary, this BD is well worth a look although probably as a rental first rather than a nailed on purchase.