Having already become one of Britain’s best (see: The Iron Claw) and most in-demand (he’ll be John Lennon for Sam Mendes) young actors, it feels downright greedy of Harris Dickinson to also emerge as an excellent writer-director, a new string to his bow added by his powerhouse debut Urchin. A confidence-packed, stylish, and funny drama of London homelessness that chooses empathy and understanding over cliché every time, it feels genuinely fresh, bringing new life to the overstuffed and often samey sub-genre of ‘Socially Serious British Debut’ by refusing to ever make its characters simple victims.
The complicated, charming urchin of the title here is Mike (Frank Dillane, who, from certain angles, doesn’t look unlike his director), an often sweet-hearted but still chaotic addict living rough on the London streets until he gets himself a custodial sentence for a violent mugging. Dickinson and Dillane keep Mike impossible to truly figure out, genuinely sympathetic a lot of the time but liable to snap into cruel and rash decisions when the chips are really down or when drugs are involved. He’s a combination of great writing and great performance, never once hitting a false note even in his most drastic of mood swings.
He’s supported by a fun and funny ensemble of both his fellow homeless and those on the more straight and narrow – interestingly, Dickinson never shows us Mike’s time in prison, instead cutting to seven months later as Mike goes back out into the world, this time with a job and a (hostel) roof over his head. From French litter-picking colleague Andrea (Megan Northam), whose camper van home briefly becomes a lover’s shack for her and Mike, to homeless frenemy Nathan (Dickinson himself in a scene-stealing role), they all feel fleshed out, reacting to Mike as people rather than plot devices to move him on.
Dickinson also avoids cliché in his own style, shifting freely between the verité style you’d expect (the physical realities of sleeping while homeless are communicated incredibly effectively) and something stranger and more impressionistic, entering Mike’s mind (expressed as a grand and well-lit cave) as he listens to meditation tapes. It’s in this latter mode that Urchin makes a couple of missteps, with the ending in particular being just too meta and intellectualised for what has otherwise been such a direct film, but Dickinson mostly keeps a fine balance, backed by a catchy and propulsive soundtrack.
Urchin is not *quite* at the level of the very best recent actor-to-director films (see: Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Little Women, Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born, everything from Brady Corbet), but it is still a debut that simply hums with promise all while being a completely compelling trip to the cinema in its own right. With over a year’s shooting on the 2028 Beatles films to come for him as an actor, I doubt we’ll be seeing an instant return to behind the camera for Dickinson but, based on this evidence, it’ll be worth whatever wait’s in store.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 