I had very high hopes for this film. It had won the best black and Asian film category at Cannes so i thought there must be something in it that warranted such high acclaim. I downloaded the trailer and viewing it made me even more excited about watching this film. The trailer was fantastic and made the film look like it was the best film ever made. I finally got the chance to view it at the Metro Cinema in Derby. I took my wife along with me. One of my best friends from school was one of the actors in the film, he played a character called Rocky. I had excitedly told my wife how good this film was going to be so you can imagine my disappointment when i finally did get to see it. I just didn't get it. The picture was grainy but i put that down to it being an artistic film. The acting was poor but i put that down to inexperience. The story was sketchy and by then i had ran out of excuses. It was so poor that i walked out before the film had ended. I never do that normally but i really was not bothered how this film ended as it would have made no difference to my overall opinion of it. If only the film was as good as the trailer, it would have been a classic. Sorry my friend, i'm just being honest.
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hardeep-112 August 2005
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Charlieboy139 September 2010I find it difficult to objectively write a full review of this title "Triads, Yardies, Onion Bhagees" as I only could manage 30 minutes. The concept of a multi-culturally controlled London criminal underworld and their struggles for dominance and diplomacy is a good one. Yet, it has been used before. Anyone thinking the Grand Theft Auto games if you replace London with "generic American city"?
As a fan of innovative screenplay, hand-held cameras and gritty settings I should be sympathetic towards this film. It reminded me of a poor attempt between the Shield and Jean Luc Goddard's Breathless. Having now related those two brilliant titles to this makes me feel dirty... If you watch the film, you'll see what I mean with the whole film being done through hand-held camera with not one single establishing shot. This I can survive with for half an hour - but please... there has to be sometime to rest! The camera often tried to show off with some freezes and zooming in. Some showy angles and trying basically to be exciting. Often it seemed to much a student project but once in a while there was a good shot. Problem was with this, when one was found, the trick was abused and used over and over again. In some ways, it was like watching an advert with fast changes from angles and moments within a scene, dialogue being narrated much like one long incessant movie commercial for a film rather than a film itself. This concept never seemed to stop and became more confusing than flashy. These jump cuts being used like French New Wave on crack!
The soundtrack had some good samples. However, the problem lies there. They should have remained samples. Through the first 30 minutes, ten second samples were looped over and over in certain scenes. Changing to another sample for the next scene. In fact, the soundtrack NEVER stops. One scene is a bhangra sample on loop, next it's some gangsta rap. It's also louder than the speech. My thoughts for this were to fill the lack of dialogue and to cover it's poor content for when someone did say something.
The acting was waaaaay over the top. Not one actor held my attention, sympathy or drew any kind of interest. Many of the actors seemed to have little experience of acting to the point of being dragged off the street. The worst moment had to be the introduction to the Chinese boss. This was the only point where a soundtrack stopped... only replaced with an ambient tone... in an attempt to appear mystic and frightening, his accent was Oxbridge, but his overacting and whispering with little gestures were pretty cringe worthy. His bodyguards were the most disappointing - especially their dresscode which was probably attempting to be Matrix-esquire.
The realism is pretty poor without a doubt. Whether this was intentional, I am uncertain. Research into the subject is laughable. One thing that particularly bugged me was a character in almost every scene would have to have a gun as a prop at one point. Whether to caress, pull out and put on the table and shove in someone's face. Now, I'm not a gangster but surely some subtly is required. Maybe it's just to remind the audience we're looking at gangsters. Having said that, I did notice a blatant yet respectable homage to Scarface where a line of coke is done off the DVD box...
CGI and effects are non-existent. Clearly, this is a low budget film. So I wouldn't expect there to be. But one attempt at a gunshot when the bullet missed and hit the wall was embarrassing! The was a little fireball on the wall when the bullet hit which looked like a cartoon explosion from an old arcade game. On top of that, it was in colour. The rest of the film is in black and white.
Regarding the grainy black and white setting. A lot of people have been quite critical of this. Personally, like the concept of the film and some of it's ideas; it isn't bad. They're just done too many times, too blatantly and abused. Of course, this isn't the case with the black and white, since they've stuck to it. As a fan of New Wave, I would say black and white with a touch of grain deserves a nod every now and then; it's a great effect for a film. But unfortunately not to everyone's taste.
This film I'd say 2 stars. Maybe some people out there like watching it - personally I'd say it's good if you're 14, an aspiring "gangsta" and playing Grand Theft Auto when you should be at school, but for anyone else, give it a miss. -
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Set in the multi-cultural London criminal underworld, Mad Dave (Dave Courtney) arranges a meeting with some members of the Asian 'Holy Smokes' gang, to mastermind a robbery at Heathrow Airport, behind the back of their leader Chacha (Jass Bassi.) Everything, apart from a security guard being killed, goes to plan...but the two more reckless members of the group are also caught up in a plan to distribute cocaine in onion bahjees, that has resulted in the death of the brother of Billy Chan (Peter Peralta), the leader of the Triads, who, of course, wants revenge, leaving Jaz (Ashwin Kumar Joshi), the level headed member of the group, in a difficult situation. Chacha's right hand man, Singh (Manish Patel, also directing), comes looking for answers, when Jaz's lover, the sister of the leader of the Yardies, gets caught up in it all.
This, somewhat low budget, film, has the look of a student production all over it (though what was to be gained from filming it in grainy black and white remains unknown!) I've only just found out how long it's been held back for, which should give some indication of how people wanted it brushed under the carpet. It's an ambitious looking project, aiming for a mix of hard hitting slice of gangster life and more light hearted stuff. Sadly, all the constraints stop it reaching it's full potential, a shame since director/star Patel could go on to greater things if he got the right people behind him. ** -
messidor6815 May 2010poor acting and really bad quality of image ,and i was so bored i have to say, the cover of this DVD made me to buy it ,and i understand its a really low budget the film and that it was shot very fast ,anyway to compare this film at lock stock its really A joke , yes the plot and idea was great and had great potential especially with some of those location who look great,,but they chose really bad actor and was not engaging at all ,,its pity i had great expectation with this film ,,and i can only tell i have to give them 10 out of 10 for the marketing and the cover of their DVD will sell a lot of DVD on hmw ..but it was a waste of my money buying this bad film ,
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We bought this film thinking and believing it was going to be a great British gangster film- comparing itself to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, we have yet to discover the comparison! The story/plot seemed like a winning formula- we were very wrong. The acting other than Dave Courtney was atrocious, and the most laughable one being that of the main character/hardman Singh. We couldn't take it seriously we found it all so bizarre and not at all close to that of real life gangsters and gangs, I can't go any deeper into that without giving some of the plot away. We presumed it was filmed in black and white as it looked even worse in colour. Had this film been more realistic and better actors used-not so wooden and reading from a script it could have been enjoyable.We had to laugh at the end that we had sat and watched it all. Do not be sucked in to the false advertising on the cover a complete waste of time.
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Mooowah9 July 2010Wow how bad? very bad. The whole thing looks like it was shot on a 1990's hand held camcorder from Argos. I can only image they had colour temperature issues (tungsten/daylight) so switch to b&w problem solved. It adds nothing to the film. The Acting is well awful very forced which combined with the bad editing that exaggerates the bad acting. Again the editing some scenes seem like the whole disappearing rabbit trick, actors suddenly appearing. I read the bad reviews but have waited years to see it. The fact it was "banned" gives it some creditability until you realise it was probably banned for being crap. The violence is laughable if anyone seriously thinks this is what is secretly happening behind the closed doors of London then you must be very stupid. Yardies scene WTF. Its just terrible. Still got another 30 minutes to go, time to go in the bin. Save yourself and your time. To many great British gangster movies just this is not one of them.
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imdb-2187230 July 2010Quite literally the absolute worst film I have ever had the misfortune to waste my money on! I never thought I would ever say the following but here goes....By far the best actor in this film was Dave Courtney! I mean by far! He plays 'Mad Dave' the head of the British mob and the only believable character in the whole film. Probably because he didn't try to act, just played himself. I'm sorry to say that EVERYONE else DID 'try' to act. I say 'try to act' because no one succeeded. I've seen better, more believable acting at a nursery school play! The plot was highly predictable, the portrayal of the triads was bordering on the farcical, the 'Yardies' were a cliché but I have to say the Onion Bhajees were the only saving grace to this sorry mess of a cast! The acting cannot even be described as wooden, it's er... plastic, no... rubber... no, sorry, I can't find the right words to describe how bad it was! I only watched it all the way through just to see if there would be any redeeming feature to the film, and I'm happy to say there was...The end! And I don't mean the ending of the plot of the film, I mean the the fact that it finished! I have never been so happy to reach the end of a film. Why would anyone finance the making of this film? How far did they have to go to find all the worst actors in the world, or did they just use all their old school friends? I honestly think that anyone who thinks this film to be good must be directly related to one of the cast or crew, or must only watch very low budget and very badly made films. I have lived in the east end of London all my life and have seen the dark side of criminal world in action first hand, this is NOTHING close to it! Don't let anyone fool you into watching this pile of trash, I guarantee you will be wanting your money back and for those of you who don't pay to watch films (you know who you are), don't waste your valuable lives on this drivel. I am not Asian, so maybe I am missing something, but surely you wouldn't think a film to be good just because your first language is spoken in it or because your fellow countrymen are in it? If you want to watch a good Asian film, watch 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Bend it like Beckham'. If it's London underworld that's your thing, then 'Lock Stock' it my friend, don't waste good money on this. Hmm, I don't know why, but I really fancy some Onion Bhajees right now!
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Alex231313 August 2015Normally I just watch films & movies and add them into my lists BUT this, for the first time I had to write a review to warn other to stay the hell away from this.
The plot sounds good but the film itself isn't.
First off, IF it really did cost £900/£1000 to make this "film" - it really does show. A group of drama/media students and maybe, just maybe a group of friends with no film making experience could have done a better job then these jokers and it wouldn't be in black & white (there was no need for it)
(I've have seen the other stuff they have done in later years and it's just as bad - bad acting, robotic dialogue and cheap production values)
The "actors" couldn't act, there no energy coming form any of the characters. The dialogue is robotic as if they (the actors) didn't even want to be there and the same goes for their body language.
I wouldn't be surprised if the producers just grabbed a bunch of people off the street and asked them to be in this "film".
And FFS, why is every "gangster" wearing shades ALL the bloody time! Oh and the gun fire scenes, didn't even bother using blanks. Most likely as the bloody guns were BB's with unrealistic digital BS put in after.
Luckily for me as soon as the "acting" started getting bad, I've fast forward most of it only stopped when I though something good would happen. And it did and that was the end of this "film". -
bigplatts27 June 2011I have absolutely no doubt that this is the single worst film I've ever seen in my entire life.
Where to being on whats wrong with it, firstly don't believe the DVD case as this film isn't actually in colour, its actually in black and white. This doesn't actually add anything to the film and has no reason to be in B&W as the films not set in the past or anything.
The story is basically about loads of gangsters trying to do mundane gangster things. The story's very hard to follow and because of the absolutely abysmal acting you can't take anything happening seriously.
The movie is horrifically boring, badly shot and has one of the worst, most nonsensical endings in film history.
And finally I have to just say that on the front of the DVD case where the film gets good reviews and one reviewer even compares the film to lock stock, you should notice that this review is from the BBC... the people that made the film. -
Leofwine_draca4 June 2023The 2000s were full of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARREL rip-offs as producers and directors found themselves keen to replicate the success of Guy Ritchie's career. Few succeeded, and when you see the quality of a film like TRIADS, YARDIES & ONION BHAJEES! You can see why. This is a totally terrible, cheap, amateurish attempt at a gangster movie, telling the story of warring gangs. Every word is stilted, every performance diabolical, and the whole thing is aggressively racist. It was made in black and white for no real reason, and bullet hits are animated by some of the worst computer graphics you'll ever see. A film to truly avoid like the plague.
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shylock-71 October 2005i sat down to watch this flick full of anticipation. so much has been written in the uk press and the reviews were either of the best uk film in years to the dodgy camera angles variety. let me tell you what i think. OK the film is in black and white but if you watch closely there is a kind of ambient colour trying to come through. the whole story about the gangs chasing after money stolen from heathrow airport was good. the acting was raw but that is what makes this film. the main gangster is a mean guy called singh who is played by manesh patel is very convincing. if you are into your badass type of villains then this guy is going to stay in your memory. before watching this film i was used to seeing uk Asian actors as doctors and bus drivers but the asians in this film show a far more seedier and murderous side than the meek and servile variety films tend to show them as. watch this film is you get the chance.
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ttaskmaster23 September 2011The grainy black and white I totally get. The lack of engaging plot is not the worst I've ever known.
But what kills this film from within the first couple of minutes is the atrocious acting. I'd go so far as to say they were just reading an autocue! I've seen better acting from Joey in Friends and in my high school drama class.
I am a fan of cheesy, bad movies but this is so poorly acted, it makes the whole film completely unwatchable.
Only once before in over 30 years have I not watched a film to the very end, including every bad TV movie you can think of... But this is now the second.
Save your money - Go watch a 1970s adult film where the mustachioed plumber comes to fix the fridge. It's more convincing!! -
movieblitz30 September 2005At long last I get to review one of my favourite films of recent years. I got to see this while a student in Leicester in an art-house cinema. Triads, Yardies... blows away every stereotype concerning the British Asian community. The film belongs to newcomer Manish Patel (Singh) who literally steals the show as well as the cash and the girl (in the story!). Very few actors achieve cult status in their debut films but it appears that Patel has done this by the bucket load. Getting Dave Courtney (Mad Dave) to portray the head of the English mob was an inspired move. Remember, Guy Ritchie had earmarked this actor for the roles Vinnie Jones played in Lock, Stock... and Snatch. The fact this film is based on a very real four way gang war between the Indians, Chinese, Jamaicans and the English mobs for control of London's cocaine trade is a secondary story line. The main story arc is about a hit-man's (Patel) love for a woman and the heist of ten million dollars from Heathrow Airport. It is a shame this film was only screened at art-house cinemas as it would have made some serious cash at the multiplexes.