Idris Elba' film knocks it out of the Yarde at Canadian debut
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| Director Idris Elba |
Lots of Fighting In The Yardie While Audience Argue Over Jamaican to English Subtitles
By Stephen Weir
Yardie, a British/Jamaican action movie
directed by superstar actor Idris Elba received its Canadian debut last week at
the Royal Cinema in downtown Toronto.
And while the 108-minute feature film was awash with blood and murder,
everybody in the sold-out theatre left on their own two feet arguing about the
Jamaican to English subtitles.
British
actor Idris Elba directed the full-length thriller
(His
first time behind the camera) and brought to Canadian by the Caribbean Tales
Film Festival. Made a year ago but shown only briefly in the UK and the US, the
Film Festival used this rare showing to introduce to the media the line-up of
films for this September’s 2019 Festival.
The
movie, based on Victor Headly’s best selling Jamaican/British 1992 novel, is an
uncompromising look at how a wave of black on black murder in Jamaica’s Trench
Town was easily exported to England back in the late seventies.
The
storyline takes viewers from Jamaica to England some 40-years ago. Reeling from
his brother’s
death in a shooting he witnessed as a child, Dennis Campbell, aka “D”, is
hired by Jamaican crime lord and reggae producer King Fox to deliver a package
of cocaine to British gangster Rico who camps out in in London. When D finds
out that the man who killed his brother years ago is also living in England, he
is torn between revenge against the murderer and the drug delivery assignment
he was sworn to make.
No spoiler alert
needed, just be aware that almost everyone gets shot dead in the film. All the hits are on Jamaican men, be they on
island Yardies or members of the British diaspora.
True to the era we
never see the police in Trench Town nor in the Borough of Hackney England. In
both ghettos the law is the gun and no one successfully pleads for mercy.
Elba
is no stranger to bloody action films. His oeuvre includes American Gangster,
Thor, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Infinity War. He also starred in Pacific Rim
and Beasts of No Nation. On TV he was the unforgettable Stringer Bell in The
Wire and John Luther in the BBC series Luther.
So authentic is
the film Elba had subtitles for the benefit of people not used to Jamaican
patois. At an open mike session held after the movie ended CBC host Dwight
Drummond found that Caribbean people at the Toronto launch were annoyed by the
subtitles – “why did they say Pickney in the movie and write child on the screen?”
asked one audience members. Others in
the theatre (myself included) welcomed the translation.
When he isn’t
making movies there is a gentler side to the Big Guy, much of centered in
Canada. When filming in the city last
year he met Canada beauty queen and model Sabrine Dhowre. They were married earlier this year and were
rumoured to be in Toronto. All the media
attending the pre-show party kept watching along College Street for Elba and
Dhowre to show up (they didn’t).
This is the 14th
year for the film festival that kicks off September 04 at the Royal and Carlton
Cinemas. There are over 20 short and
full-length films made in Jamaica, Haiti, Guadalupe, Virgin Islands, Trinidad
and Tobago, Canada and the US.
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