Essex Boys in a crime-thriller, directed by Terry Windsor in 2000.
The film starts with credits appearing black on white on the screen. Straightaway, this sets the mysterious mood of the thriller. The title 'Essex Boys' appears, followed by a black screen.
There is a soundbridge of Billy, the main character, opening the door of a garage with a bang.
Within the first 43 seconds of the film, the director has already established the noir thriller genre with white-on-black chiaroscuro lighting (which is also used a lot in ‘Fight Club’ and ‘Matrix’). The lighting connotes firstly a sense of mystery in the mise-en-scene, as anything could be hidden in the dark overshadowed parts of the setting which the audience cannot see, but it also gives the audience a point of focus, to look at, similar to the vanishing point used in the railway station when the boy walks to the toilet alone in Peter Weir’s 1985 drama-thriller ‘Witness’. This suggests menace and possibly even foreshadows corruption later on in the plot. Another thriller convention in this particular mise-en-scene is the claustrophobic, enclosed space in the garage. The location is also very dirty and unglamorous place full of spider webs, which suggests the place is hidden or secret. All sorts of things happen behind garage doors in thrillers.
The diegetic sound adds realism to the mise-en-scene and the non-diegetic voice over of Billy talking (similar to the opening of ‘Animal Kingdom’) serves as a cultural reference to Essex due to Billy’s accent. The voice-over also provides the audience with extra information and suggests that maybe the scene describes is a flashback. The audience are watching the scene from Billy’s point of view. This makes the audience identify and sympathise with him: he is the ‘goodie’.
After opening the garage door, Billy sits down in a rusty old car and turns on the windscreen wipers
Introduction: Jason Locke
Billy tells the audience in the voice-over that the character Jason has just been released out of prison.
Cut to the car driving out of the garage building in daylight.
The landscape in the shot is unglamorous; the roads are surrounded by old, grey, grotty buildings.
Cut to a point of view shot of the car driving into a tunnel – a confined space- which adds to the thrill.
The car is driving into a beautiful vanishing point, which makes the tunnel resemble the barrel
of a gun.
of a gun.
This is another metaphor foreshadowing the darkness of future events, much like the subliminal ‘STOP’ sign and letters on the road stating ‘STAY IN LINE’, both of which the car drives past before entering the tunnel.
Cut to Jason sitting relaxed (relieved even -> because he has just been freed from prison) in the backseat of the car.
Cut to a close up of Billy driving the car.
The deliberate reflection of the tunnel’s light bars on the windscreen over Billy much
resemble prison bars or Billy being put in a cage.
This is again, is foreshadowing darkness and violence/crime.
resemble prison bars or Billy being put in a cage.
This is again, is foreshadowing darkness and violence/crime.
Billy is blinded by the reflection of the light. This suggests that the character is blind to what
he is getting himself into, like the character Jay in Animal Kingdom.
he is getting himself into, like the character Jay in Animal Kingdom.
 |
| Ambient lighting of light bars reflecting on windscreen. Non-diegetic music playing. |
The car drives past a sign which says “WELCOME TO ESSEX”. This is another cultural signifier. Essex had a notorious reputation at the time in which the film takes place, being accused of giving Margaret Thatcher power.
Cut to the car stopping, which the audience is told in a voiceover to be for Jason to ‘visit an old friend’.
Cut to point of view shot, from Billy’s eyes sitting inside a white van, of Jason walking into a fishermen’s place, beating up a man and pouring acid into his face.
Cut to Billy and Jason driving off in a white van. The faceless, enigmatic white van is another brilliant genre convention as anything could be hidden inside a white van.
Diegetic sound of a man screaming in the back of the van, while a medium close up shows Jason’s vanity as he inspects his shirt and finds a stain of acid.
Cut to the car stopping. The location is part of Jason’s world, the Essex marshes; a place which he knows very well. It is a featureless, bleak place with no houses or walls as boundaries. This suggests that Jason has no moral boundaries, which his line “I’ll do anything except for bestiality” ironically contradicts.
Billy opens the van, the bleeding man runs out screaming, Jason kicks him to the ground, the man falls dace downwards. Cut to long shot of Billy and Jason driving out of the plain territory in the enigmatic white van, leaving the man to horrifically rot in the middle of nowhere, where no one will find him.
Looking at the way the director brilliantly establishes the noir thriller genre, an important theme in this film seems to be human moral corruption.
