The film revolves around a special view of urban life coming everywhere. It seemed that things were going in a different context when the knives replaced the guns and replaced them fiercely with aimless youth everywhere, while a gang embarked on a chase to avenge the killing of a person.
Shank boasts some lively direction and has a couple of nice ideas but is ultimately let down by a repetitive script, some poor performances and a dodgy central message.
With its jarring slang, reckless narrative and offbeat imagery, it's as close to being A Clockwork Orange for the Broken Britain generation as we have. It's up to you to decide whether that's a good thing or not.
Total Film
March 25, 2010
That the entire narrative can be easily compressed into a 90-second dream sequence says much more than the garbled anti-violence messages.
There are a fair few good ideas in Shank -- a nicely-staged market scene featuring Colin Salmon and an animated fight scene being two -- but they don't come together into anything that even looks halfway like a movie.
