“Yardie,” Idris Elba’s directorial debut, is a more personal take on the routine crime film. Despite all of the genre’s double-crosses, failed heists, and Mexican stand-offs, the repetition of these tropes has lessened their impact (a generation of ironic Tarantino rip-offs surely didn’t help). But “Yardie,” based on a novel by Jamaican-born British author Victor Headley, is rooted in enough layers of personal devastation and regret to make the movie more emotionally wrought than many of its peers.
The story begins in Kingston 1973 with young teen Dennis (D for short) witnessing his brother’s murder during a failed attempt to broker peace between two rival gangs. Elba, along with screenwriters Brock Norman Brock (“Bronson“) and Martin Stellman (“Quadrophenia“), highlights the suffering inflicted upon the people of Kingston as their city is ravaged by these warring clans. It’s clear that the loss of his brother has cast a shadow upon D that may never lift.
Flash-forward ten years and D (played now by Aml Ameen) is a rising soldier in the gang run by King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd), a father figure who cared for D after his brother’s murder. Fox sends D to London to deliver cocaine to club owner Rico (Stephen Graham), but D rebels against orders and tries to negotiate his own deal. As storytelling conventions and common sense would indicate, this is a very bad idea. D also reunites with old flame Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), now living in London with his young daughter, and drags them into an increasingly dire situation.
“Yardie” has a few tense scenes of gunplay and violence, but it’s more character study than an action-packed thriller. Ameen is strong in the lead role, both affable and afflicted, helping the audience stay invested in a character whose decision-making is myopic and destructive. Though “Yardie” could stand to be more suspenseful and viscerally engaging, the decision to avoid car chases and heavily choreographed fight scenes is wise. It helps establish a more understated tone and doesn’t betray the film’s somber preoccupation with the outcomes of violence.
Elba’s debut doesn’t belong to the upper echelon of films from well-known actors stepping behind the camera – it holds your attention, but it’s never as gripping as the material should be. It doesn’t help that D is continually positioned as a sympathetic protagonist despite his selfish, flawed actions. But while “Yardie” won’t garner Elba the auspicious notice of a “Gone Baby Gone” or “A Star Is Born,” the multi-talented performer certainly acquits himself. In addition to acting, Elba is also a DJ and musician, so it’s no surprise that many of the most electric moments in “Yardie” are music-oriented. D is an aspiring musician, as was his brother and many of the characters he encounters, and Elba’s evident pleasure in shooting ‘70s Jamaican dance parties and ‘80s English DJ competitions is contagious.
But, aside from a few hopeful glimmers, “Yardie” displays a steadfast commitment to tragedy. This is a movie of human folly, in all its pathetic idiocy, of poor choices and needless suffering. It opens with a village elder asking D, “Which way are you going to go? Will you go with the righteous? Or will you go with the damned?” But D, whose tormented course is circumscribed by an act of malice and ineptitude, lives as if his path has already been chosen for him. [B-]
