Zebra Crossing review (DVD) ★★½

Depicting the lost generation of those raised and metaphorically trapped on Britain's numerous high-rise estates in stylistically shot monochrome, it isn't surprising that Sam Holland's Zebra Crossing has drawn several comparisons with Matthieu Kassovitz's La Haine.

Unfortunately, in taking on the roles of cinematographer, editor, producer and writer as well as director, Holland has probably juggled too many balls in one hand, leaving his film several storeys short of Kassovitz's seminal portrait of social alienation and disaffection. With a few lessons in delegation, however, he may yet hit the heights to which he aspires.

Zebra Crossing searches for a level of profundity to take it beyond the now well-worn clichés of British urban coming-of-age dramas such as Kidulthood, but instead gets lost in an in-yer-face tale of apparently parentless kids scoring drugs, stamping on people's heads and shooting homosexuals that will leave Daily Mail readers with the mistaken belief that they are watching a fly on the wall documentary.

The film's relentlessly bleak series of vignettes of nihilism and wanton violence seem over-cooked, and its quasi-religious, semi-supernatural sequences out of kilter with an otherwise aggressive tone. The script too is overly didactic and a little clunky, at times screaming its message directly at the audience. More than once, main character Justin, the inner-city gang member yearning to put his dog days behind him, asks with all the conviction of a noughties-era Micheal Jackson: “Why is there so much hatred in the world?”.

Despite his shortcomings as a writer, it must be said that Holland does display a certain amount of visual flair throughout Zebra Crossing, capturing the starkly concrete hinterland of his subjects' world with aplomb, and utilising expressionist techniques to amplify their feelings of fear, anger and sorrow.
Kudos must also go to all four leads; despite being lumbered with some fairly hackneyed material, they are the film's other major asset, with Greg Wakeham in particular gloriously maniacal as the sociopathic Tommy.