If the measures of filmmaking success are originality, dynamism, and a certain renegade charm, then Blue Story, the debut picture from musician-turned-auteur Andrew Onwubolu, aka Rapman, is surely one of the best movies of the past year, a tautly held string that thrums to the beat of its own creativity and ambition. If, on the other hand, the standard is narrative and moral complexity, the verdict is less favorable. In either case, this is a movie that deserves to be seen.
Available on Google Play and Amazon after a controversial theatrical run in the United Kingdom, Blue Story is the tale of two adolescent boys swept up in rival east-London gangs. Timmy (Stephen Odubola) is sensitive and polite, a nice young man who hangs back at a schoolmate’s party rather than flirt with his crush, Leah (Karla-Simone Spence). Marco (Micheal Ward) is brash and outgoing, an exuberant Don Juan who teases his friends and chases women with equal flair. In an early sequence of almost unconscionable directness, Onwubolu juxtaposes Timmy and Leah’s sweet first date with shots of Marco making acrobatic love and pausing to kiss his own biceps. Two peas in a pod these are not, yet what are small differences compared to the deep, unthinking loyalty of teenage friendship?
That Timmy and Marco’s loyalty must eventually be tested is a consequence not of their clashing personalities but of dueling postal codes and the nuances of ethnicity. Though both boys go to school in Peckham, home to much of London’s African diaspora, Timmy lives with his mother in nearby Deptford, which boasts a sizable British Caribbean population. When a friend from Timmy’s former school attacks Marco in the name of Deptford’s Ghetto Boys, the pair’s allegiance to one another is tested. When the rival Peckham Boys exact a vengeance that involves Leah, their bond is severed altogether.
Given the specifics of its plot, Blue Story might be expected to play like an exercise in exploitation: a trans-Atlantic Boyz N the Hood designed to give liberal moviegoers the illusion that they know something about London’s black underclass. Such a concern, however, fails to take into account the film’s painstaking authenticity. A native of Deptford with an ear for its linguistic music, Onwubolu fills his script with so colloquial a patois (e.g., “You mirked it, blood”) that subtitles can only take the outsider so far. The presence of unknown actors has a similar effect. So precise is the movie’s simulated reality, in fact, that authorities in Great Britain suspended screenings nationwide after a showing in Birmingham led to a machete-wielding brawl. Perhaps anticipating trouble, London Mayor Sadiq Khan allegedly denied Onwubolu and company permission to shoot on location, thus forcing production to move to the (whiter) northern suburbs.
Yet despite these bona fides, Blue Story is, at heart, a narrative about children rather than the hardened gangsters they’d like to become. Crouched in the back of a public bus, Timmy and Marco joke about the girls they know and take bets on who will win their affection. Inviting the boys to her party, Leah announces that the dress code is to be “grown and sexy.” In a quiet moment, one character confesses to another that she hasn’t seen the new season of Game of Thrones yet because she’s “waiting to watch them all at once.” That Onwubolu coaxes believable performances from his young cast even in these moments of pathos is one of the triumphs of his directorial debut.
Far less successful, unfortunately, are the frequent rap interludes with which Blue Story attempts to distinguish itself from such purely realistic fare as Menace II Society and The Wire. Performed by Onwubolu himself in full Rapman persona, these sequences lend considerable energy to the proceedings but can’t quite transcend the fact that they contain some of the most simplistic narration in the history of film. Having just staged a betrayal of Shakespearean proportions, for example, Onwubolu literally raps to the camera that Timmy and Marco “used to be best friends [but] now [are] fully estranged.” Prithee, no more. Even worse is when the movie uses Onwubolu’s appearances to explain (yes, explain) that months or years have passed. Never mind that the accompanying montages bring to mind a deranged episode of Scooby Doo. The real issue is the stunning lack of faith in the viewer’s intelligence.
What Blue Story ultimately lacks is neither stylishness nor verve but the confidence that its audience is paying attention and can be trusted to navigate subtleties. Hence the disastrous decision, in the film’s climactic moments, to remind viewers of what’s at stake with a series of unnecessary flashbacks. But hence, also, the movie’s predictable and preacherly conclusion that gang life is not all it’s cracked up to be — that “there really ain’t no winner when you’re playing with them guns.”
In the end, Blue Story is a film that’s undone by its own obviousness. As Timmy and Marco might say, “Thanks for the tip, bruv.”
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
