CLUBBED/THE NEWEST BRIT STUNNER

Yes, it’s Trainspotting time all over again. Or maybe make that Clockwork Orange time.

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Whatever, the point is that a new film with a great future, one that raises the bar and changes the landscape, with the chance to rekindle Brit film, has finally sprung up.

In 80s Coventry danceland, of all places. And after thirteen years incubation.

Clubbed. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But the word is going to become more nuanced and probably become household slang as well, as commonplace as sliced bread.

Exactly what does Clubbed mean? That is not an easy question to answer at this point and the precise definition will evolve as the film gets better known, just as the concept of Trainspotting acquired varying resonances over time.

One connotation might be "feeling frustrated and angry", as in "I’m clubbed". Another could be "settling a debt with an enemy", as in "So I clubbed him". A third could simply refer to "a night out dancing" as in "We clubbed".

Definitely it could mean, literally, "beaten over the head with a hard object", because Clubbed, as well as being at times a very funny and tender film about a bar in the 80s, is also often a very violent film.

In brief, it is the story of a divorced father of two glowing girls who finds a kind of redemption with three colleagues while working as a club doorman before various forms of drug fuelled, big city low life take it all away from him.

So far, so familiarily Brit grit.

But Clubbed is full of surprises that lift it high above some simple gang bang, including the leading quartet: a poet who takes up boxing; a doorman bouncer who practices Ghandi passivity; a dreadlocked Alsatian owner who goes to church every day with his mum; and a father to be who will do anything, indeed does far too much, for his future child.

Somehow Clubbed pulls off the trick of making you care for - even weep for - these odd types who you would normally be afraid to pass in the street.

More than that, Clubbed forces you to root for them, to scream at them to rise up and beat the living daylights out of their criminally rich oppressors, while at the same time wishing that they would simply back down, move away and start a quiet life somewhere else safer.

Terrifyingly, Clubbed is essentially a true story, written by Coventry bouncer / boxer turned author Geoff Thompson, from incidents in his hugely successful autobiography Watch My Back.

Thompson's goal with the script was to demonstrate that anyone depressed with their lot in life can change it and be happy, as he himself did/is. (Yes, another surprise, for all its violence, Clubbed delivers an upbeat ending!)

The film was been through a tortuous decade and more of development hell but is now ready to premiere, perhaps at the Cannes Festival in May, and to get a general release later in the year.

Whenever it appears, catch it early unless you want to be one of those sad people who missed out on the excitement of being among the first to surf the wave of admiration for Trainspotting or Clockwork Orange and all that these two films did for British cinema.

Actually, maybe the best reference is the film called Following, the pivotal small picture that launched director Christopher Nolan on to do works like Memento and Batman, as well as making a star of Clive Owen.

Directed by Neil Thompson, Clubbed has something of the same menacing air as Following and lead actor Mel Raido an equal dash of that film's black tied hero's charisma.

Such references are likely to be crucial to Clubbed because the only way it can fail to do any less than spectacularly will be if it is mis-sold as a gangland thriller rather than a contemporary drama.

For more news about Clubbed, try http://www.clubbedthemovie.com/