What’s this then? The much anticipated film adaption of Laura Wade’s excellent 2010 play Posh.
Oh yes! I remember that – about the Bullingdon Club right that club at Oxford that David Cameron and Boris Johnson were in? Erm, maybe. Laura Wade herself disputes this connection but the play/film does concern a riotous drinking club at Oxford for the most 'elite' of the university’s students. Having watched the film though, we can’t imagine Dave and co being quite as badly behaved as the chaps in this film.
READ MORE: Laura Wade, Who Wrote The Riot Club Movie, Tells Us Why You Need To Watch It
Hmm. OK. I remain skeptical. What happens then? Well, Miles (the entirely covetable Max Irons) shows up at Oxford University as a fresher and quickly finds himself (along with other fresher Alistair, played by Sam Claflin) wrapped up in 'The Riot Club' which turns out to be a centuries-old drinking and dining society reserved exclusively for the 12 most eligible students at the university. It’s members are from good stock, went mainly to Eton (this is a world where Harrow is considered almost unthinkably common) and are of course, loaded.
Wow, they sound like people I want to hang out with. Not: Yep, for the most part you’d be right. The film centres mainly around the club’s annual dinner (held miles away from the university thanks to the club being banned from every dining establishment anywhere close to Oxford proper) where things go from raucous to nasty to nightmarish over the course of an evening as the boys degrade women, treat members of the ‘lower classes’ with outright disdain and generally prove themselves to be terrible human beings.
Ah, right. Makes for uncomfortable viewing them? Yes definitely. Although we're seriously suprised with the acting chops on show. While the trailer makes the film look a bit erm, trashy, and the presence of stupidly attractive actors like Douglas Booth (previously seen in Miley Cyrus’s LOL) and Sam Claflin led us to write the film off as a something of a teen flick, the reality actually turned out to be quite different. Sam Claflin especially is fantastic as the entirely hateable Alaistair, the angles and twists in his face conveying pure hatred better than any line in a script could. Plus, what with the next general election com Boy were we wrong. The cast is outstanding and the issues raised are relevant and topical. The timing as we come up to next year’s general election that’ll decide the fate of the Conservatives make the film all the more poignant.
And what are other people saying? There's been a few grumbles that it's not as weighty as the play. The Telegraph said the play had 'A pungency to the writing which has been heavily diluted here, along with its political bite', while the Hollywood Reporter claim of Laura's writing that 'While her screenplay bothers to develop a fully formed character out of principled everyman Miles, the most redeemable of the bunch, the others tend to blur.' *The Mirror*however liked it, saying, 'It’s a smart, provocative film, brimming with great performances, with Max Irons, son of Jeremy, especially good. It’s guaranteed to make you despair for certain privileged youth' while Digital Spy called it, 'An effective and shrewdly observed satire, with a handful of standout performances and a gloriously bitter sting in the tail.'
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**And what are we saying? **Overall, it's a pretty powerful piece of cinema. There's a few slightly cringey parts added in for the film's benefit that we could have done without (dropping the keys to a convertible super car through the door of a charity shop just because someone was sick in it) but the main narrative; what unfolds over the course of the actual dinner has a really well-crafted narrative; one that keeps you watching first in fascinated delight as these oafs live up to every cliche going and then in unmitigated horror as things take a turn for the worse. Definitely not one to see in West London.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.