Trespass Against Us

Dir: Adam Smith

2016

**

When I was first made aware that Michael Fassbender, Sean Harris and Brendan Gleeson were going to star in a Gypsie crime thriller directed by the guy who made all of The Chemical Brother’s best music videos, I was pretty much sold. So when I did finally get round to watching it, I felt utterly let down by all the false promise. Director Adam Smith clearly didn’t want to insult the traveller community and made a point to show the characters as a very unique family, with gypsy roots but in no part representative of their culture. He does this badly. He presents an unrealistic situation and unbelievable characters and probably insults when trying hard to do the opposite. The accents are wrong, the clothes are wrong, the way of life is wrong and what they get away with is ridiculous, absolutely none of the story can be taken seriously. Serious scenes are met with moments of comedy, but it’s never clear whether said comedy is actually intentional or not. An intense and emotional scene involving the disappearance of two children is followed by light-hearted and humorous religious dialogue and an inbred/mentally unstable man (your guess is as good as mine) painted blue. I can only imagine that Smith is going for quirky, but the reality is that the film is a mess. Smith seems hell bent on making a cult indie but he just can’t help himself and throws in all of the clichés of modern British cinema. Rory Kinnear’s portrayal of a police officer with a personal vendetta against the family is dreadful. It’s now a stereotype character and is always played by the same sort of actors (I’m guessing Rafe Spall was busy that month). I will give Brendan Gleeson the benefit of the doubt and suggest he did the best with what he was given, his character gets all the best lines and each one is delivered perfectly, it’s just a shame they made him do comedy after such serious themes are explored. Michael Fassbender never looks as if his heart is in it, it’s far from his best performance but I can see how he thought it could be. The idea isn’t that bad, it really is the direction that lets the whole production down. Sean Harris, the most petrifying actor in the UK, it utterly wasted, as are the supporting cast of talented and familiar faces. I think this is the real issue I had with the film, it should have been an intense thriller, Brendan Gleeson’s character should have been terrifying and the overly sentimental conclusion should have been binned. It needed to pick a style and stuck to it, instead of trying its hand at nearly every genre you can think of, except for a few that actually they could have considered. Nothing was of substance. For example, there is a scene whereby a few of the community go on a joy-ride mission, to send a message to the police. They paint the car bright yellow, apart from a slight gap on the windscreen. The scene adds nothing to the film and makes very little sense to the overall story, but in Smith’s mind I’m sure he could see it on a classic film poster one day, his version of the Italian Job’s three Mini Coopers, destined to be an iconic moment in modern British history. It’s meaningless, unconvincing in every aspect, never engaging and somewhat lethargic. Luckily for all involved, it’s also rather forgettable.