18th Sep2023

‘Accused’ Review

by Kevin Haldon

Stars: Chaneil Kular, Lauryn Ajufo, Robbie O’Neil, Nila Aalia, Nitin Ganatra, Frances Tomelty, Ollie Teague | Written by Barnaby Boulton, James Cummings | Directed by Phil Barantini

Director Phil Barantini has become one of my go-to directors in terms of pure quality homegrown filmmaking. From my introduction to his work with Craig Fairbrass driven feature Villian, the short movie Seconds Out and the outrageously brilliant Stephen Graham powerhouse one shot, Boiling Point, I’m beginning to get the feeling we can group this man with some of our favourite British directors.

Whether we are spending time with an ageing con fresh out of prison, an alcoholic head chef on the busiest night of the year or Tim from The Office working the streets of Liverpool, we are sucked into these worlds because the stories are real, the performances are raw and a lot of the time they feel like they are happening right outside your front door. This brings us to Accused, a story that is devastatingly all too common but rarely spoken about.

Harri (Chaneil Kular) is a healthy living world at his feet 20-odd year old Muslim living in London. We meet him as he heads out of town to his parents to dog sit for the weekend, where his girlfriend Chloe is going to join him. On his way out of London, there are murmurs of a terrorist attack having occurred on the tubes. Later in the day while on a call to Chloe they see reports on the news with photos of the “suspect”. Chloe jokes that he kind of looks like Harri which doesn’t go down too well.

What follows from here is the general public becoming armchair detectives to figure out who the bomber is so they can dish out the justice they feel is deserved. It’s not long before Harri is posted up on social media and his details become known to some proper wrong ‘uns hell-bent on getting to him.

Tension is the name of the game here as Barantini asks us to really have a look at ourselves in more ways than one. This is a skill the director has mastered over his career and uses every tool to maximum effect but we can’t sell the cast short either. This is the Chaneil Kular show and he is putting on a clinic as he guides us through this horrific situation he is forced to face as he fights to survive because… well… because people are assholes.

Barantini calls on a couple of his regulars with Seconds Out‘s Robbie O’Neil in a very different role as one of our invaders. Girlfriend Chloe is the always reliable Lauryn Ajufo (Boiling Point, Villian), I’ve said before and will say again, keep your eye on this actress. Not enough can be said for frequent flyer cinematographer Matthew Lewis, these two together could make a Smurfs movie so tense it’s a borderline horror. It’s one thing to write a long tension-filled shot but it’s another to execute that perfectly.

I thought Accused was an excellent movie, perfect? No. However, we are covering a bunch of areas here that are very of “the moment” and have a lot to say about WHO and WHERE we are. The media’s sensationalism of current events that often stirs up a hornet’s nest of hate over social media. The anonymous nature of the people spewing hate from the safety of their mum’s basements. It all contributes to a horrific unease that is truly felt in this movie and very much reflects part of the world outside the story.

We leave Harri and his story having witnessed transformations and true colours coming through. But while we leave this story, I’m not sure it will leave us for a little while. This is the type of movie that should absolutely be shown to our youngsters right now, it makes you think and leaves you in a state of “Are we doing enough? No, we still have a long way to go”.

***** 5/5

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