Harris Dickinson goes from actor to director with this homelessness drama that was an award-winning hit at the Cannes Film Festival, but Film Brain didn't really like it very much.
00:00Writing star Harris Dickinson makes his direct-to-all debut with the British drama Urchin.
00:05Frank Delane plays Mike, a homeless person who is imprisoned after attacking a man and stealing his watch.
00:10Released seven months later, a cleaned-up Mike tries to reintegrate into society,
00:15but a lack of support means he struggles not to relapse into bad habits.
00:19Dickinson has been impressive in front of the camera in movies like Scrapper or The Iron Claw or Baby Girl,
00:25and I think Urchin at the very least shows that he has lots of potential behind it too.
00:28Dickinson also has a small supporting role as a fellow homeless man, a habitual thief, who the main character tries to avoid.
00:36Urchin was especially big at Cannes this year, where Dickinson and Delane won prizes for their direction and acting,
00:41but I do think this is going to be a divisive film, and I have to say, I wasn't really a fan.
00:46I appreciate that Dickinson tried not to make the main character a saint for easy sympathy and make him flawed and complex,
00:52and Delane gives him a kind of twitchy anxiousness that makes him both spiky and sensitive.
00:57It's hard to watch him struggle and feel rejected by society, but Mike also has a self-destructive streak,
01:03often lashing out at and pushing away those that try to help him,
01:07and unable to follow instructions and take accountability at work.
01:10Someone tells him, you want to be told what to do, which is quite accurate.
01:15He's also unable to truly confront his crime, and the moments where he's forced to do so usually trigger spirals in his behaviour,
01:22that makes it seem as though the film is critical of the idea of restorative justice,
01:27but I'm not sure that was Dickinson's intent.
01:30What I believe Dickinson is condemning is a social system that doesn't provide long-term support for the most vulnerable,
01:36and while I was empathetic to the film's themes, I found Mike to be a difficult character to connect with emotionally,
01:41and sometimes Delane's performance seems more acted than authentic.
01:45I was a little surprised by some of the praise the film has received for its originality,
01:49because the story's direction and Mike's horseshoe arc was obvious to me right from the opening moments,
01:55as I've seen this kind of film many times before.
01:58What does stand out is that Dickinson adds in these surrealist images, like Mike isolated in a cave,
02:03and these experimental moments felt jarringly disconnected from the social realism
02:08that Dickinson often films like an observer,
02:10and risks being pretentious, trying to be profound.
02:14The film is also bookended by these religious elements that are not properly threaded throughout,
02:19so when it becomes a major part of the film's abstract ending, it feels unearned and unsatisfying.
02:25Dickinson has a lot of ambition as a director that he'll hopefully achieve one day,
02:29but Urchin doesn't have as much depth as it strives for,
02:32and I have increasing little patience for artfully beautiful wallows in Misery and Dash Dreams.
02:38Admittedly though, my opinion is the outlier,
02:40so maybe that says more about me than it does the film.
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