Starring: Max Irons, Sam Clafin, Holliday Grainger
Before coming to the screen, The Riot Club existed as a stage play, Posh. Posh quickly acquired a reputation being a provocative piece and whilst this big screen adaptation doesn't go into the Clockwork Orange levels of debauchery and violence, it's still a film with a power to shock. The titular club operates out of Oxford University and its ten student members are all part of the super-privileged upper-classes. The group is also largely made up of unlikable swines. Let me be clear that I don't mean elitist snobs, but rather unnervingly fascistic and sneeringly self-entitled monsters.
These "Terror Toffs" (or "Hooray Henry Hooligans" if you prefer), certainly get the job done of angering up the blood and raising the bile. It's an intention of the filmmakers that is pulled off brilliantly, but they lack detail. Max Irons' Miles is meant to be a more agreeable and more down-to-earth connection between the audience and this world which seems alien to most viewers, but beyond him most of the Riot Club members all fit the same self-centred and spoilt brat mode, the biggest exception besides Irons is Ben Schnetzer's turn as a Greco-British rich kid, who endures borderline (or even overtly) racist comments from his associates and even that often falls to the way-side.
The film has been seen as an indictment of archaic notions of the upper-class and I leave The Riot Club wondering how accurate an assessment that really is. The actions of the characters are boorish and shocking, made more so by feeling certain that these kinds of people with these viewes, really do exist. But, from the rather flowery and indulgent opening (which resembles something in the vein of Peter Greenaway) there seems to be a certain romantic and glamourised notion of what this film seeks to defame. The filmmakers largely succeed by the end of the movie and I have no doubt that most people will walk away with a sense of vitriol (perhaps more than was originally intended). But I also think this film could find a following amongst those who share the club members' values. That is troubling.
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