What made me watch 'Shank' was its concept. Found it to be a brilliant one, of my recent film viewings the concept here was one of the better and most interesting ones, and executed right 'Shank' had potential to be a halfway decent film.
There was a potentially decent story and film in 'Shank', sadly neither come out in a film where it was actually very difficult to find many good things with so much done badly wrong. This is coming from somebody who actually wanted to like the film, not going in expecting to hate it. Some nice atmospheric colours here and there, hence why the rating is not a 1/10, but that is pretty much the only thing in the film that wasn't less than bad, everything else is bad to disastrous.
Rest of the production values are just awful, with particularly nauseating photography made even by choppy editing.
Music is over-bearing and some of the placement is very random, coming out of nowhere for the sake of it regardless of whether it fit or not. The script throughout is stilted, confused and lacking plausibility, while the story suffers from a chaotic structure and useless overlong padding which makes the pacing painfully erratic on both extremes of rushed and dull. No suspense or intrigue whatsoever and there is nothing to be emotionally invested by, which makes the lead character's plight impossible to identify with.
Direction is barely competent, with a far from slick visual style, no sense of drama or urgency and a complete confused mess in tone. The action is poorly filmed and edited and never exciting, instead too loud, very clumsy and too much. Didn't mind so much that the characters were clichés, did mind that they were bland and obnoxious stereotypes with no development let alone depth. The acting is poor and less, the film even bringing the worst out of Colin Salmon.
In conclusion, very bad but have seen worse. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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