Blue story is a movie about two friends who are torn apart by gang violence in England. The movie starts off with a Rapman’s rap narration of the negative effects of gang violence. You are introduced to Timmy, the protagonist. Timmy has to go to school in a different postal code, where he forges a deep bond with Marco and others. Although life seems to be perfect for the protagonist, gang life seems to creep in its ugly head to disrupt everyone’s life. Now, because of where each friend lives, they become enemies.
This movie takes on a serious topic, but does a poor job presenting it. This is a shame because the film goes out of its way to deliver an overbearing anti-gang message which I feel is incredibly ineffective. There are bits of dialogue where they awkwardly deliver this message. Even the lyrics are blatant in this effort. This type of hand holding is insulting because it suggests a distrust in the audience to make their own conclusions that gang violence is bad. I wish that instead of constantly telling me that gang violence is bad, they would spend the time showing me how it is bad.
My biggest issue with this movie is the overbearing narrator. This movie feels more like a Rapman music video with bits of plot added as filler. Rapman is always present and ruins a lot of tension in the movie. Now, I have always had an issue with narration in movies because it feels rather lazy. Why can they not just show me? In this movie, Rapman is constantly there, telling you things you already know in a way that doesn’t really fit the tone of the movie. Had they leaned into the idea and made into a rap opera; his presence might feel a little less overbearing. The movie doesn’t even establish what type of impact rap has to do with gang violence save for a small quick mention about getting views on Youtube. Because if feels so alien, there is no real tension in the movie and even when serious events unfold, you can’t take them serious because of Rapman.
If you take out all the redundancies and the narration, this movie wouldn’t fill an hour. A movie that spends so much time telling you how big of a problem gang violence is doesn’t have enough of a story to fill an hour and that is incredibly telling of the quality of movie this is. I wish that instead of using this cheap gimmick spent more time creating deeper characters and showing the negative effects of gang violence on the character’s lives. Instead, you won’t care about any of this movie. None of the characters stand out in particular and none of the scenes are as charged as you would expect a movie like this should be. I would even argue that it is incredibly comical in how it portrays gang life. It’s a shame because you can tell that the actors in this movie try incredibly hard for a movie that, frankly, doesn’t deserve their effort.
It’s not a horrible movie by any means, it just isn’t effective in what it seeks out to do. There isn’t any real reason to seek this movie because there are a lot of movies out there that do this better.