I'd like to say that my raging teenage hormones didn't get the best of me but I'm afraid they did when I then found out that the cast basically included every gorgeous young British actor that I had recently developed a fondness for. It's safe to say that in that moment I was sold on the charming beauty of the cast alone. Once I had listed the cast to a few of my friends it really wasn't a hard job to get a group together to go see it but as we sat in the cinema there was no way we were prepared for what we were about to see.
This is a film that cannot be likened to anything else I have ever seen. Never have I been so repulsed by a film and yet not be able to look away. What seemed to start out like your typical British comedy in the opening scene, by that I mean a posh man in a tactfully shot montage of naked women, booze and intellectual debates, turned into a horrifying classist rally climaxing in one spectacularly shot evening of violence and drunken debauchery.
Okay so I know that that last sentence sounds much like a pompous load of words strung together but there is truthfully no other way to describe the plot in all its intense bizarreness. It was honestly fascinating to be faced with ten wholly unlikable protagonists. The plot of The Riot Clubs gives the audience a brief insight into the lives of ten very wealthy male Oxford students and then puts them into a small middle class pub where they have the intention of getting absolutely shit-faced and causing a riot.
Having gone into the cinema knowing most of these actors in one lovable role or another, I was suddenly struggling to find even one soul amongst them that wasn't detestable. In the climax of the film, and their evening, Sam Claflin's character climbs up onto the table and pours out the most horrific classist speech which was so unbelievably believable that I struggled to look at him without feeling a sinking in my gut for some weeks after. With the group then rallied, in one spectacular shot (yes! It was all one long shot) the cast go hell for leather and tear apart the very interior of the pub and the final push comes when the owner walks in and asks them "What gives you the right?". Needless to say the owner does not escape the wrath of these railed up children and gets beaten like a human-shaped punching bag.
I've struggled to truly capture the enthralling nature of this film but I can undoubtedly say it's the British film industry at it's best. The Riot Club draws you in with it's dreamy cast, then makes you loath each and every one of them while you deal with the morality of the film itself. There are so many questions. Were all of the club to blame? Is sitting by and letting it happen just as bad as doing it? How do people get away with this just because they have money? Are these really the people we want running our country in future? Is our university system really allowing these things to go unspoken of?
If this hasn't been enough to persuade you to run down to your nearest HMV and pick up a copy of the DVD and then I don't know what you are looking for. The Riot Club left me, not speechless but savagely excited and morally revolted and frankly I can only quote the film and leave you with the words: Oh. My. Wow.
