Yardie

Name: Yardie
Genre: Drama, Crime
Released: March 15, 2019
Duration: 101 min
Rating: 52
Cast: Akin Gazi, Alexandra Vaz, Aml Ameen, Antwayne Eccleston, Chris-Ann Fletcher

2019

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Ratings

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6.5

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Ratings

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Yardie

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Movie Details & Credits

Rialto Pictures | Release Date: March 15, 2019 | Not Rated

Starring: Akin Gazi, Alexandra Vaz, Aml Ameen, Antwayne Eccleston, Chris-Ann Fletcher, Christopher Daly, Deepak Anand, Fraser James, Karl Farrer, Mark Rhino Smith, Naomi Ackie, Rayon McLean, Reshawna Douglas, Shantol Jackson, Sheldon Shepherd, Stephen Graham, Tolu Ogunmefun

Summary: Set in '70s Kingston and '80s Hackney, Yardie centres on the life of a young Jamaican man named D (Aml Ameen), who has never fully recovered from the murder, committed during his childhood, of his older brother Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary). D grows up under the wing of a Kingston Don and music producer named King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd).Set in '70s Kingston and '80s Hackney, Yardie centres on the life of a young Jamaican man named D (Aml Ameen), who has never fully recovered from the murder, committed during his childhood, of his older brother Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary). D grows up under the wing of a Kingston Don and music producer named King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd). Fox dispatches him to London, where he reconnects with his childhood sweetheart, Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), and his daughter who he's not seen since she was a baby. He also hooks up with a soundclash crew, called High Noon. But before he can be convinced to abandon his life of crime and follow "the righteous path", he encounters the man who shot his brother 10 years earlier, and embarks on a bloody, explosive quest for retribution - a quest which brings him into conflict with vicious London gangster Rico (Stephen Graham).… Expand

Director: Idris Elba

Genre(s): Drama, Crime

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 101 min

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Critic Reviews

Bradley Gibson

Mar 14, 2019

Yardie is a ripping classic gangster tale done right, but that’s only part of the appeal. It goes beyond the narrative into full cultural immersion with music as the window into a time and place. Read full review

William Bibbiani

Mar 14, 2019

Idris Elba’s directorial debut is an atmospheric and catchy DJ Noir about criminals who’d rather spin vinyl than sell cocaine, and it’s an impressive first film, only held back by the conventions in the plot. But it’s the details of Yardie’s world that make it worth visiting. Read full review

Chris Nashawaty

Mar 14, 2019

Yardie is a sprawling drug-world saga, but whatever narrative flaws it has are helped out by an infectious selection of dub-heavy reggae tracks and an authentically gritty sense of period and place. Read full review

The Guardian Mike McCahill

Sep 2, 2018

A debut of unarguable promise, though – plenty to build on if Elba can resist the adolescent lure of running round with 007’s PPK. Read full review

David Fear

Mar 14, 2019

Headley’s book is a hard nugget crackling with urgency. This feels like soft-boiled pulp. Read full review

Gary Goldstein

Mar 14, 2019

Elba brings care to the film’s performances, period look and musical elements. But the freeze frames, needless voice-over bits and stalled narrative momentum undercut the picture’s potential power and uniqueness. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

Mar 13, 2019

The story, based on a novel by Victor Headley, is pointless and occasionally ridiculous. And the movie is hardly helped by a protagonist that we’re expected to care about, even as he does an unending series of colossally stupid, violent and self-destructive things. Read full review

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User Reviews

Strongwork

Oct 22, 2019

Look into my life...tell me what do you see...cultural story, the tale of the path you choose...great story and anti drug film.."...stay away from dat flake mi boi !"

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

dr_zoidberg590

Oct 4, 2020

Well directed with good performances, engaging plot and a great soundtrack. Faithful to the cultures it portrays at the least the aspects it is about.

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Bertaut1

Mar 25, 2019

Very little to get your teeth into

Yardie is the directorial debut of Idris Elba, and is about as pedestrian a film as you're likely to see all year; a listless gangland-based drama composed of a litany of gangster-film clichés. There are a couple of elements worth praising, and it'sVery little to get your teeth into

Yardie is the directorial debut of Idris Elba, and is about as pedestrian a film as you're likely to see all year; a listless gangland-based drama composed of a litany of gangster-film clichés. There are a couple of elements worth praising, and it's competently directed, but by and large, it's extremely shallow, containing nothing you haven't seen in half a dozen other films. For his first film, Elba seems to have settled on something personal, a story with whose milieu he is already familiar. However, the film is populated by generic characters, themes, and narrative beats; at best, it's fitfully interesting, at worst, it doesn't work at all, plodding along at its own imprecise pace, getting nowhere fast.

Based on Victor Headley's 1992 novel of the same name, and adapted for the screen by Headley, Brock Norman Brock, and Martin Stellman, the film begins in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973, a town in the midst of a bloody gang-war. Sick of the violence, local man Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary) stages an impromptu block-party. All is going well, with Jerry even coaxing the two rival kingpins up on stage to shake hands. However, a youth in the crowd shoots Jerry dead, leaving his kid brother, D, distraught. Ten years later, D (Aml Ameen) has worked his way up the ranks of music producer/drug lord King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd), who was one of the men onstage when Jerry was killed. Fox packs D off to Hackney with a kilo of cocaine to be delivered to Fox's London connection, Rico (Stephen Graham). D is only too happy to go, as his childhood sweetheart, Yvonne (Shantol Jackson) relocated to London several years earlier with their daughter, and they've been estranged ever since. However, upon meeting Rico, he and D rub each other up the wrong way, and D flees with the cocaine.

Pretty much everything in Yardie looks completely authentic, almost documentarian. Similarly, the soundtrack isn't simply representative of monolithic 70s/80s, but actually gives the film its rhythm, with Elba choosing songs of great cultural significance - tracks such as Lord Creator's "Kingston Town" (1970), The Isley Brothers' "Work to Do" (1972), Max Romeo & The Upsetters' "War Ina Babylon" (1976), Black Uhuru's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1979), and Grace Jones's "My Jamaican Guy" (1983).

This sense of authenticity is carried into an aspect of the film with which I'm sure a lot of people will have problems - the dialogue is delivered entirely in heavy Pathois, without any subtitles. Personally, I think this is an admirable decision; nothing takes you out of a film quicker than English subtitles for spoken English. And although there is no doubt that it's hard to understand some of what is said, and a few of the character beats are probably lost as a result, David Ehrlich's ludicrous assertion that "40% of the movie is unintelligible" in his damning IndieWire review is absolute rubbish. It's really no different from seeing an English Renaissance play or reading Chaucer - once you acclimate yourself to it, there shouldn't be any major problems.

The mise en scène really evokes a place and culture too, as Elba does a fine job of indoctrinating the viewer into the cadences of the culture. This aspect of authenticity is matched in the props; according to production designer Damien Creagh, almost nothing was custom made for the film, with the vast majority of props being working examples of the period.

Unfortunately, however, the rest of the film is extremely poor. Firstly, we've seen this film before, dozens of times - the gangster with a heart of gold wrestling with his loyalty and his desire to go straight, with only the love of a good woman to help guide him - and there's not an original character in the mix, with every single one of the principal cast coming across like they've been assembled from a "make your own" movie clichés modelling kit. The directionless plot also displays no real sense of dramatic intent, jumping from one thing to the next, often with little causality linking the two.

The problem is, simply put, that the narrative is so much weaker than the milieu containing it. Certainly not a problem exclusive to this film (if you've seen anything Ridley Scott has done post-Gladiator (2000), you're already familiar with this issue), but it's especially pronounced here because a) the narrative is so derivative, and b) the milieu is so strongly evoked. The film is too enamoured with the tropes of the gangster movie to work as a genre subversion, nor is it pulpy enough to be enjoyed for its excess, à la something like Scarface (1983) or Romeo Is Bleeding (1993). It occupies this inoffensive, vanilla middle ground, not really doing a huge amount wrong, but not really doing a huge amount right either.… Expand

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JLuis_001

Mar 20, 2021

Decent in terms of execution, but it lacks style, and its tone is completely uneven.

Idris Elba's decent debut as a director, but frankly it's worth more as a curiosity than as a film that deserves the attention of a bigger audience.

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Steven1981

Mar 19, 2020

I don't know what year YARDIE came out in cinemas because Google says 2018 and on here it says 2019 but it was certainly one of those years and I remember watching it in cinemas. Yardie which is a strange title for a film is directed by Idris Elba and none of the actors in this movie I'veI don't know what year YARDIE came out in cinemas because Google says 2018 and on here it says 2019 but it was certainly one of those years and I remember watching it in cinemas. Yardie which is a strange title for a film is directed by Idris Elba and none of the actors in this movie I've ever heard of in my life. I don't even remember what the storyline or plot was, if there is one at all it sure is very muddled in the movie. Yardie is just full of black people with no real acting skills and terrible scene after terrible, terrible acting on top of even worse acting. Nothing really impressed the viewers and that's exactly how I felt, it may have some action or violence but can't remember however it's done poorly and this film is directed poorly. None of the characters in the film are likeable and Yardie leaves a horrible taste in your mouth. Not the worst film but it's crap compared to most film standards.… Expand

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