Pirates
Ten Second Review: Fun and full of life, Pirates will warm the hearts of those who give it a go.
Admittedly this was an easy sell to me. When I heard Reggie Yates was directing a film I was already sold. When I heard it was basically a road trip film from north to south London anchored by garage music, I booked tickets to make sure I didn’t miss it.
Cappo, Two Tonne and Kidda are lifelong friends but Cappo has been off at uni so when comes back for Christmas, the boys know they have to make the most of it. When Two Tonne’s crush asks what their New Years plans are he quickly makes something up. Now the three boys will have to find tickets to the year’s hottest party, get new clothes and get all the way to south London and the clock is already counting down.
The beauty of telling small stories is there is much less chance of overstaying your welcome. Pirates is a perfect example of this. A small story with a few characters that didn’t over extend itself, and at 79 minutes, it didn’t give itself time to deviate and open too many story lines. Everything had a payoff and everything lead somewhere. Subsequently, it was a fun and snappy story that really made me smile.
I’ve often commented on the length of a film when reviewing. In light of last week’s comments from Ridley Scott it seems like something that might be worth qualifying a little. The first thing to be said is that I love good long films and some films need that runtime. Each of The Lord of the Rings films (just the standard editions) are long, off-puttingly long some might say. They very much earns this runtime though their result. Endgame is very long, but it is the result of a decade of films and successfully balancing all its parts would be near impossible in a shorter runtime. Even a very recent example like King Richard is long, but the story it tells demands a hefty runtime and it uses it well.
By contrast, The Hobbit is a bloated mess. Batman vs Superman seemed to think being long would give it some gravitas because it did nothing with its 151 minutes. Most recently, No Time to Die could have cut whole narrative plot lines and no one would have missed them. In fact I can’t honestly think of a narrative line in No Time to Die that was worth saving. It was more a collection of half baked ideas that they seemed to hope would pass muster as a single film.
When I comment on a film’s runtime there is often a reason. Sometimes it’s to complain about misusing time by bloating a film out, sometimes the focus is on how well and succinctly a film maker has used a short runtime to tell a story and sometimes it’s more a case of letting people know that a daunting runtime “doesn’t feel that long when you are actually watching this one” or that a film is “worth watching, even though it’s runtime is hefty”.
If your story only needs 79 minutes to be told well, make it 79 minutes. If it needs 152 minutes, that’s fine too, but don’t blame an audience who aren’t interested in it and reviewers giving you valuable criticism. Their time as consumers, viewers and professionals is valuable and you have to take into consideration your view of your product versus their view. What you want as a filmmaker is not always what serves your story best and if you believe it is, you need to know that you can in effect shorten the field of your potential audience.
Pirates already doesn’t have the widest audience, but those interested will be rewarded with an absolute treat. Engaging, dynamic and lots of fun, the direction, acting and music all meld together to make for an amusing and sweet film that really breathes an era. I certainly have friends I’ll be pushing this film out too, and it’ll be an easy sell because they won’t grown at the runtime.
