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Bookmark this pageScum (1979)
Director: Alan Clarke
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Roy Minton's teleplay about Borstal life and its vicious circle of violence, remade as a movie after being banned by the BBC: a toughened docudrama (schools of BBC/old Warners/Corman) that carries the same force as the improvised weapons Ray Winstone uses to bludgeon his way through the Borstal power structure. A far-from-blunt instrument itself (and containing some necessary leavening humour), this is potentially knife-edge film-making: will audiences buy the reformist liberalism and stomach the violence, or in fact buy the violence and racism and miss the message? The careful calculations show, but you're still likely to leave at the end feeling righteously angry.Author: PT
Cast & crew
Director: Alan Clarke
Producer: Clive Parsons, Davina Belling
Cast: Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth, John Blundell, Phil Daniels, John Fowler full cast
Duration: 97 mins
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