Fish Tank Review

British film fans you've seen me review alot of British comedies over the years but you've never seen me review a drama that is until now. This is a film that i've been planning on doing for a few days now and it's also a film that's a favourite of mine as well as one that I don't see alot of people talking about for reasons that I don't really know so I thought i'd get the ball rolling by giving you my review of Fish Tank.

The plot of the film is Mia is a fifteen year old girl who can be extremely violent and lives with her I guess abusive mother but everything changes when her mother introduces her new boyfriend. Outside of what I just said there really isn't much there in terms of a plot so it can be seen as just a collection of scenes edited together but in my opinion in this film it works since it's set in a more realistic world and so there really doesn't need to be a strong plot.

Starring in the film was the debuting Katie Jarvis as Mia Williams , Kierston Wareing as Joanne Williams , a young Michael Fassbender as Conor O'Reily , Rebecca Griffiths as Tyler Williams , Harry Treadaway as Billy , Sydney Mary Nash as Keira O'Reily and Sarah Bayes as Keely. Yes American fans you read that right before he was in the X-Men universe as Magneto Micheal Fassbender was getting quite well known here in the UK and this was one of earliest film roles.

As for what I thought about the acting it was a lot better then what I remember it being and indeed the performance from the debuting Katie Jarvis is truly something to behold and I believe that she could very easily make it as an actress. As for the rest of the actors they are honestly really freaking good of course Micheal is great in this film but that's not really anything new but I will say that the actress who plays her sister can be pretty annoying at times.

What is even more shocking is the fact that Katie isn't a professionally trained actress a casting assistant for the film happened to see her arguing with her boyfriend and offered her the role. Even the train station she was seen arguing at is seen in the film so I can only imagine how strange it was for the lead actress going back to the place where she was offered the lead role in a film except now she's there actually filming it.

This is one of the few British made films that I actually went to go and see when it first came out and one of the few that I actually own on DVD. That doesn't mean I like everything in the film tho like for example the main character can come across as really annoying at times and the mum is kind of a b**ch and so she comes across as really unlikable and the same can also be said for Mia a few times as well.

This is the second film to be written and directed by Andrea Arnold and I have to say that it's a shame that she doesn't do more feature films because she's really talented. Altho I personally feel that she's a better writer then a director since this film does go on for a lot longer then what it really should be and that's something that could have been fixed if the director was better but as a writer she's great she makes the characters feel real.

This film is nearly two hours long and the story just doesn't stretch to that length at all if anything the film should have been at least an hour and a half if not a few minuets less then that. For some reason tho the director made it last around two hours and that means we get alot of padding and I mean alot of it so get ready to sit through alot of scenes with the characters that don't go anyway and don't play a part in the story at all.

This film, has a whopping 91% on the film website Rotten Tomatoes and while usually I wouldn't really list what the percentage is of a film here tho I think that's a justified score because the film is really that damn good. Like I said this is a drama and so there are alot of dramatic scenes in the film and I honestly feel that while those scenes do indeed work there is perhaps a few two many of them but that's just my opinion.

Now I would very much like to talk about the character development in the film however there really isn't any to speak of. The Mia we see at the end of the film is the exact same one that we see at the start of the film so she's learned nothing which is never a good thing because there needs to be some form of personal growth in a  film even one that has a realistic setting heck the only character i'd say has some small development is the mother but that's really it.

The world that this film is set in is one that's based on realism and so you get people behaving how real people normally act. This film is also set in what was known as "Broken Britain" which was when crime rates were pretty high and the film does do a good job of presenting the characters in that world there presented more as real people rather then what movie makers think real people look and sound like.

Overall this is a really good film and it's one that fans of British films should go and check out if they have the chance but it's also a flawed film and so with that mind the film scores an 8.5 out of 10 from me.