Mike McCahill 

Borrowed Time – review

A British debut about a debt-laden burglar has a low-key charm but feels over-familiar, writes Mike McCahill
  
  

Borrowed Time
Makeshift urban fairytale … Borrowed Time. Photograph: PR

London Film School graduate Jules Bishop's debut rearranges the usual geezer plot mechanics into a makeshift urban fairytale, more Children's Film Foundation than Kidulthood. Theo Barklem-Biggs is the tracksuited drip coerced into burglary to settle his debts; Phil Davis the property's owner, possessed of an 18th-century blunderbuss and various tatty life lessons – and it's only Davis's unsentimental fleshing out of this whiskery, Steptoe-esque coot that saves the film from total familiarity. Boosted by colourful East End location work, i t exudes a certain low-key, pootling charm, but often gets sloppy: who casts Perry Benson as a middle-class snob?.

 

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