TwentyFourSeven

Directed by young Shane Meadows, whose hilarious short Where's the Money Ronnie! was a festival favorite in 1996, TwentyFourSeven is basically the artiest, bleakest after-school special ever made. Shot in pristine black-and-white, it stars good old redoubtable Bob Hoskins as a lonely middle-aged bloke committed to reforming the local lads by organizing a boxing club. The lads in question are largely interchangeable (Meadows highlights each one during the closing credits--one of those "Danny Nussbaum as Tim" deals--and I was alarmed to find that I didn't even recognize most of them, and couldn't think of a single thing they'd said or done during the entire preceding hour-and-a-half), and the film is saddled with a "message" so simplistic that it almost demands one of those soberly cheerful hosts who appears at the end of the show to make a speech beginning "And remember, kids..." Mildly entertaining and relentlessly gorgeous, but that's about it; Hoskins, as ever, is superb. Optional. (M D'Angelo)