The Riot Club: Not Just Pretty Faces

DCM's Adam Reynolds caught an exclusive screening of The Riot Club at BFI Southbank as part of the BFI London Film Festival, which featured a Q&A with director Lone Scherfig and almost the entire cast of the Riot Club. Below he provides his thoughts.

The Riot Club- "loosely" based on the antics of the infamous Bullingdon Club, an elite Oxford University crew of the most privileged and most well - connected boys. The order of the day; boozing, initiations, disdain for the average Joe and ultimately, unadulterated violence at the Riot Club's inaugural dinner.

This stylish film features some of the hottest Brit talent including Douglas Booth, Max Irons and Sam Caflin among others. The film is by no means formulaic; each character is impressively presented in the early moments of the film so that we not only feel akin to these devilishly wealthy boys, but we almost like them. Making it all the more tense as it reaches its chilling centrepiece, the hedonistic dinner at the Bull's Head where their behaviour turns from Brideshead Revisited snobbery to menace to violence.

The sympathetic directing makes this more than a sexy teen film but a social satire of the highest order. The Q&A at the close of this exclusive screening was insightful and there were audible gasps of delight as the boys assembled on stage.