The Wisdom That Comes With Age

And other such trite nonsense.

Absolutely not applicable to any discussion about Noel Clarke's Adulthood, the followup to Kidulthood. While I had reservations about the first - too much crammed into one night and, while it didn't glorify the lifestyle it portrayed, it certainly seemed to be making excuses for it - I found the second utterly, breathtakingly brilliant.

Following the continued existence of Sam (for it cannot truly be called a life) the day he's released from prison, we learn that people want him dead immediately, if not sooner. To ascertain who, he tries to track down old acquaintances who, no surprise, are reluctant to have any contact with him. He has to break into his own home because his mother changed the locks. He feels the need to reconnect, to do something to show that he's changed, that he realises his mistakes and that, while he can never make up for what he did, he at least wants to move on...

...But no-one wants to listen.

Meanwhile, people still want him dead... Money is changing hands, weapons are being sought, and Sam's enemies are closing in.

The climax of the film - without wishing to spoil it for anyone - reminded me somewhat of Gran Torino, in that Sam goes out to end the cycle of violence that he started more than six years before, knowing full-well that it's likely to be the end of him, one way or another. And, just like Gran Torino, the film left me blubbing.

I still think that Kidulthood should have been made as a mini-series, spread over several weeks (both in terms of the story and in terms of broadcast, just to give the viewers time to recover from one set of bruises before receiving the next), but Adulthood was perfectly judged, and fit more easily into the single-day timeframe.

It ends on a positive note, for which I'm glad... But it's a sad truth, spoken by Sam, that being in "big man prison" didn't teach him anything, least of all what to do when he came out.

In other news, I heard today from an agency I signed up with last year (technically). It'd be nice if it was in response to an email I sent almost two months ago, but it really wasn't. They spoke to my former boss about a vacancy that needed filling, she sent them my way. Amusingly, the email I got from the agency was formatted as a reply to my 2-month-old email, with a brief apology for the 'delay'.

Ahem.

This summarises my objection to Agencies. They make money by putting other people to work, and yet those same people have to basically beg for the privilege? Call in regularly to ask "Any work going this week?"?

Not I, gentle reader, not I.

They know what I can do, they know how to contact me. If I wanted to beg for work, I'd be claiming income support and visiting the job centre every fortnight.