Starring: Jamie Foreman, Dexter Fletcher, Zoe Tapper, Freddie Connor, Guy Burnet.
Director: Brendon O'Loughlin
Certificate: 18
Duration: 95 minutes
Released on blu-ray: July 12th 2010
Baseline is the harrowing drama of how British tennis players Tim Henman and Andy Murray continually crash out of major tennis finals. No, just joking, it’s actually a fierce, contemporary, gritty urban drama about the East London Grime Club scene. What’s a ‘grime’ club? Grime is apparently the next step on from garage music. “It borrows bits from garage, dance music, house, techno and drum’n’bass. It’s really British. If you go to a grime club, it is a bit like the Eminem movie 8 Mile. The MCs are battling on the mike, trying to outdo each other, but they’re rapping about things kids here understand.” At least that’s what a columnist in the Telegraph wrote, that I looked up after watching the film. To me, Grime, sounds like noise but there is something intriguing about it. It’s not something you strictly need to know to enjoy the film but the grime clubs are integral to the plot.
Danny (Freddie Connor), the Baseline Club bouncer is used to breaking up fights, managing drunken kids and working the door, but he’s suddenly plunged deep into an underworld when he has to rescue Terry, the club owner and local gang leader, from a hit-man. After his show of loyalty, facing danger to save his boss, he gets a promotion to club manager, but he has to abide by the rule that he must turn a blind eye to the shady goings on in the club, both on, and off, the dance-floor.
Baseline succeeds in its efforts to be a gritty and real drama, it’s not really my sort of thing and I can’t really say that I enjoyed it, but I can still appreciate that the direction is good, that the acting is solid and that the script is also pretty strong. Jamie Foreman and Dexter Fletcher produce the stand-out performances, but the supporting cast is also decent.
Baseline looks good on blu-ray. Even though there are a lot of scenes in dark clubs, and outside at night the image is still, on the whole, clear and fairly crisp. The sound is also good, helping to convey the sense of being in a club listening to loud music, the bass mix in particular is strong, as you would expect.
