Although docked a star because some of the acting is a bit stage-school, it’s essentially constructed from crime-film cliches, that could claim a pension and, worst of all, it’s way too long. Nevertheless, there are substantial things to admire about Anti-Social. Writer-director Reg Traviss clearly can’t get enough of hard men making tough choices and never met a jump-cut or a pumping electronic track he didn’t like, but this tale of two Cockney brothers – one (Josh Myers) running a smash-and-grab crew, the other (an unconvincingly cast Gregg Sulkin) a Banksy-style graffiti artist on the rise in the art world – is a marked improvement on his earlier efforts (Screwed, Psychosis). For every duff note in the dialogue there are two or even three that sing true, and even if the chase and shoot-out scenes are Michael Mann pastiches that look strange on the streets of London instead of LA, they’re reasonably good pastiches.
