Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Babak Anvari
Starring: George MacKay, Hugh Bonneville, Kelly Macdonald, Percelle Ascott, Varada
Sethu
Suspense and social commentary make for awkward bedfellows in
writer/director Babak Anvari's third feature,
I Came By, with both elements trying to hog the blankets and leaving a shoddily
constructed narrative exposed. At its best, Anvari's film, co-written
with Namsi Khan, embraces its silliness and leans into its more
ludicrous elements, but at its worst it's trying to make ham-fisted
points about class and race.
George MacKay and Percelle Ascott play Toby and Jay, a
pair of childhood friends who, now in their early twenties, spend their
nights breaking into rich people's homes and leaving a graffiti mural
bearing the message "I Came By" on the wall. They don’t steal anything
from the homes, they just want to let the wealthy get the message that
they have the power to screw with them. In a nice early twist, Toby is
revealed to be a sham. Though he speaks with a "streef" accent, he's
revealed to be from a relatively comfortable background, living with his
psychiatrist mother Lizzie (Kelly Macdonald), who is constantly
begging her man-child son to clean up after himself. Conversely, Toby's
black friend Jay has come from a tough background but is trying to leave
it behind him, having become a father to his law student girlfriend
Naz's (Varada Sethu) son.
While working his day job as a tree trimmer, Jay finds himself in the
plush home of retired judge Sir Hector Blake (Hugh Bonneville).
Deciding it would make the perfect target for a graffiti attack, he
takes a photo of the home's wi-fi password and passes it on to Toby.
When Naz tells Jay that she has a lot of respect for Blake due to his
campaigning for immigrant rights, Jay tries to talk Toby out of breaking
into the judge's home, but Toby ignores his pleas. Once inside the
judge's house he makes a shocking discovery.
I won’t get into the exact nature of that discovery, as the film teases
the details throughout much of its first half. What I will say it that
it plays into the classic trope of a thriller's psychopathic villain
having a grudge rooted in a childhood incident. Without spoiling
anything, Blake's motivations for his villainous deeds are certainly
unique, if largely preposterous.
The elephant in the room here is that this thriller takes place in
London, famously the world's most surveillance-heavy major city.
Characters are able to get away with actions here that simply shouldn't
be possible in a metropolis where you're always being simultaneously
watched and recorded by a half dozen cameras. There are other moments
where the police act in an unfeasibly inept manner for the benefit of
the plot. Some of these can just about be forgiven, like Blake
dissuading a pair of beat cops from searching his basement by mentioning
how friendly he is with their commanding officer. But others just
stretch the limits of your suspension of disbelief. At one point Jay is
arrested for lurking in his car outside Blake's home, but it's for
possession of a spliff that the cops take him in, not for the letter
addressed to Blake they find on his person, which, unbelievably, they
give right back to him when he's released. At several points the movie
has Jay verbally state how as a young black man, the cops are out to get
him, but the movie's actions completely contradict such a
statement.
If you can brush aside its various inconsistencies and leaps of logic,
there is a minor bit of fun to be had with I Came By. It's mostly courtesy of Bonneville, who is genuinely creepy as the
terrifying toff. He's also undeniably charming, and his ability to
switch between the two modes on the turn of a dime adds to his sinister
nature. I couldn't help but think what a good Hannibal Lector Bonneville
might make. Elsewhere, Macdonald manages to add some genuine humanity to
her one-dimensional struggling mother character, though the Scottish
star still looks so young I struggled to buy her as the mother of the
30-year-old Mackay.
