Oh my. The Hollyoaks storyline was shockingly obvious. I saw the beginning of it at my girlfriends and instantly said:

'He's not real'

http://www.mymovies.net/competitions...gangster/1.jpg

Strangely compelling. Is Manchester the chav capital of the world though? I would like to hear RT's thoughts on this, seeing how it's a little more local to him.

Well it depends on what your definition of a chav is.
What you see in the film is probably only what Noonan wants to be shown.
He surrounds himself with young scallies because he knows he can control and trust them.
The serious business end of his set up is hidden from view. His brother Dez was more dangerous, until he got killed.

There are dozens of families like the Noonan's here, mostly of Irish decent. Believe it or not, Shayne Ward's family are notorious.
His father is a convicted rapist and his brother was suspected of murder (the charges were dropped), his mother was arrested for assault, two of his uncles and a cousin imprisoned for murder and another cousin of rape.

I've not seen the film, but there was a documentary episode of MacIntyre's Underworld called The Next Generation which focused on the Noonan family. (see vid)

At the end of the clip one of the lads says, "That's Manchester for yer innit" and I know what he means, but these people are victims of themselves...they have a choice.
You've got young kids and bringing them up in a city like Birmingham can't be much different Lee.
My parents realised that education and keeping me off the streets kept me away from mixing in those circles.
And that's exactly what I'm aiming to do with mine.
Chav, is a state of mind.

Nah the Chav thing was tongue in cheek. As you say, you are only seeing what they want you to see and I felt certain things were contrived as were some of the elaborate crane shots-is this a doc or wanna be movie?

I don't actually live in Brum David, I just come from there. I live in Cheltenham and my kids have grown up here. It did seem in the film as though Noonan was giving his family no choices other than to follow in his footsteps. As you say there is always choices.

Hand****. Kinda stupid.

It's a documentary, but they collaborated.
They figured that it was better to play along than have MacIntyre dig up the dirt...I bet MacIntyre couldn't believe his luck, hence the original documentary developed into a film directed by him.
Truth is stranger than fiction.

The more I think about the film, the more I dislike it. DM has a reputation for peeling back the layers but he seemed to be nothing more than a finger puppet.

I think Collateral. It fucking sucked.

But in the last month, I've seen about fifteen films, including Salton Sea. Great, great movie.

Collateral (like a lot of Mann's films) gets better with each viewing, he is a brilliant director and his use and choice of music in films is usually excellent.

Collateral was alright, shame about the ending. And I refuse to take any man who chooses to spell his name with two X's seriously.