‘Attack the Block’ - thetyee.ca

You have to listen very closely to what is being said in the tight little alien invasion film Attack the Block. This level of attention is necessary, not only to understand the gnarled English being spoken by the film’s characters, but also to understand the unspoken sub-currents that swirl beneath the action. The film is set in a bleak bit of Southeast London, but it could easily take place in South Central L.A. or any other downtrodden urban centre where young men and women with few economic prospects and little sense of investment recreate the Hobbesian truth about life being “poor, nasty, …