A unique knockout: Olivia Colman leads a stellar ensemble in the Rufus Norris/Adam Cork/Alecky Blythe "verbatim musical," LONDON ROAD

Wow. This is something else. LONDON ROAD, according to its press release, is a "verbatim musical" -- one in which its writer, Alecky Blythe, uses the transcript of her interviews with the of residents of that titular street in Ipswich, England, to create the lyrics for all the dialog we hear in this new musical film, which has then been set to a rhythmic, pulsating score by Adam Cork, said to be inspired by the dialects and intonations of the residents interviewed. The result is a knockout of a movie that compares to little else that TrustMovies has ever seen.

As directed by Rufus Norris (shown at right), from an award-winning British theater piece of the same name (which Norris also directed), the movie version has been "opened out" so perfectly that it never betrays its "theater" roots. The subject? Well, that's an interesting question.

Initially, it would seem to be the murder of five prostitutes in the Ipswich area who worked along London Road. Yet we never see the murders, nor do we find out anything about the dead women, other than their line of work. We also -- and this is key, I think -- never meet, see nor hear their killer, who, during the course of this film, we learn is caught and then convicted of the crime.

Instead, we meet the denizens of London Road -- the folk who live around the murder site -- and we are soon made privy to their thoughts and fears, as initial shock, then paranoia, followed by reassurance and even some hope spring to life. We also see and hear the TV reporters covering all this for the media (their reports, I should think, are also given us verbatim).

So what we have here, finally, is a look at how the British bourgeoisie reacts to something this horrible. And the reaction, while pretty predictable, is also pretty disgusting. In the eyes of these people, the victims don't count for much. Only the fear and shock and worry that the inhabitants feel for themselves seems to matter. (The character played by Olivia Colman, above, at one point even insinuates that the killer may have done the community am actual favor by "offing" the hookers.)

Now, the fact that all the dialog/song is verbatim is one thing. But the choice of what to include, and how often to repeat it, is an artistic one. And in this way, I think, the movie makes its main point: the pettiness of these reactions, compared to what has happened, grows almost staggering.  As I watched I began to wonder if and when the creators would allow us to hear from some of the local prostitutes who remain alive. They wait a good while, but at last, we do hear. And then, of course, class and economics and culture and a lot more rear their heads. To their credit, the moviemakers do not push this: They simply offer it up for us to make of it what what we will. (Shown at left is Nick Holder, playing one of the inhabitants of the titular road.)

In the end, our good citizens unite to make their London Road a better, tidier, more beautiful place -- there's a contest for the best local garden, doncha know, with the media covering all this. So, out of horror and pain can come renewal and life. Yeah, right. My spouse, who prefers to see the happy side of things, took this part away from the film. I, who tend to draw darker conclusions, saw something else. The movie allows us to both have our views enabled but leans, I think, toward my darker one.

It is as a piece of art that London Road shines brightest. The dialog/song, even with/because of all its repetition, grows ever more wonderful and strange, and the music does indeed capture the feel of the dialects and the character intonations here. The choreography by Javier de Frutos, in tandem with the direction by Mr. Norris, is often brilliant in its use of simple facial or neck movement to underscore points. Note the scene in which the townspeople await in the street the arrival of the killer in a police van. The movement here makes for brilliant, subtle cinema experienced as a kind of stationary dance. And the energy level? It's staggering. The film is alive and moving at every moment, (That's Anita Dobson, playing one of the elderly neighbors, shown above.)

The finale, too, in which one of the younger prostitutes (Kate Fleetwood, above) looks quietly at all these goings-on, allows us again to be made aware of the other side of the coin. I was not a particular fan of Norris' earlier film, Broken, but I shall remember and treasure this one for a long time. I can't imagine any caring, intelligent film/theater-goer not rushing headlong to the cinema to see the kind of surprising, encompassing art that can be made from the most unexpected of sources.

Also in the estimable cast, by the way, is one, Tom Hardy, shown above and below, who has but a small role as a taxi driver and fills it to perfection. So he can sing, too? Is there anything this actor cannot do?

London Road, via BBC Worldwide North America, opens this coming Friday, September 9, in New York City at the Village East Cinema and the following Friday, September 16, in Los Angeles at The Sundance Sunset Cinema and Laemmle's Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Elsewhere?  Perhaps, if word-of-mouth takes off as it should. Otherwise, we'll have to wait for it on digital or DVD -- at which time, I hope, it will come complete with English subtitles. I could have used them while watching the screening link supplied. Still, what a pleasure it will be to see this film again, with those subtitles at the ready.

Rufus Norris' BROKEN proves this year's most event-prone (though serious) movie

Event-prone?  More like event-wracked. Every time we catch our breath something new -- and not too nice -- seems to happen. We expect our action movies to be chock-a-block with event, but serious dramas? Not so much. TrustMovies is conflicted about BROKEN, but I suspect no more so than many of those folk -- filmmaker, actors, screen-writer and perhaps even the novelist upon whose book the film was based -- who have brought this movie to very odd, stop-and-start life.

The filmmaker here is actor-turned-director Rufus Norris (shown at left), whose first film this is, and his movie is cast and acted quite well (as we often get when thespians sit in the first-time-director's chair: witness last year's Quartet) by an excellent cast of both unknowns and knowns. Much of the movie takes place in a small cul-de-sac where several houses very nearly butt up against each other and where much that happens in one house is made privy to the others by virtue of proximity. This is both a bad and, finally, a good thing, but it makes for a hell of a lot of tsuris as the movie moves along.

If I had to place the film into a particular genre -- though it deals with themes such as the proper care of an emotionally troubled/handicapped young man (a fine Robert Emms, above) coming-of-age, bullying, diabetes, and love/romance/commitment -- I'd have to call it a slice-of-life movie, event-packed variety. We're really seeing into what transpires to this odd little "forced-community" in something of the manner, if in very different film style, that we got from Martin Ritt's 1957 film, No Down Payment, over a half-century ago.

The three homes with which we're most concerned are inhabited by a nice family broken by divorce, when mom walked out on dad (Tim Roth, above); another not-so-nice one (featuring a nasty, bullying dad played by Rory Kinnear, below) broken by death; and a third in which aging parents are being slowly broken by trying to tend to their emotionally and intellectually handicapped young-adult son. (You can rather quickly tell where the film's title comes from, and, as Alain Resnais might say, You ain't seen nothin' yet.)

What holds, barely, all of this together is the Roth character's daughter, nicknamed Skunk, and the marvelous performance by the new actress who plays her, Eloise Laurence. Ms Laurence is a natural, and her work here is something like what was achieved by Mary Badham in her To Kill a Mockingbird debut.

While Broken doesn't begin to compare to Mockingbird in either its popularity or art, it is almost impossible to imagine the film without Ms Laurence in this role. She handles everything from comedy to pain (physical and otherwise) in exemplary fashion and is a joy to watch each step of the way. In what is probably the film's funniest extended sequence, as the girl pleads, insists and annoys dad for a new cell phone (below), the actress is an unalloyed delight.

Also on hand are excellent performers like Cillian Murphy (below, left, and badly messed up) and Zana Marjanovic, further below, as nanny to Skunk and her brother, who gets rather close to the man of the house.

Scene by individual scene, it is difficult to fault the film, mostly because the acting is so very good. But the accumulation of fraught incident after fraught incident, together with the occasional too convenient coincidence (a car happening by just as a beating is taking place) indicates that perhaps the filmmaker was trying too hard to include everything in the novel. He gets a lot in, all right, but at a price. Almost nothing seems given the time and detail that it demands. This is why multi-part cable series tend to do a better job with event-laden novels: They have time enough to explore.

Still, Boy A screenwriter Mark O'Rowe has done a journeyman job with the novel by Daniel Clay; that excellent cast is worth seeing; and the performance of Ms Laurence almost demands a viewing. Director Norris also does a nice job of allowing us to see that no one here is pure villain or hero. There are shades to us all.

Broken, from Film Movement and running but 91 minutes, opens this Friday, July 19, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall, Beverly Hills. The film will open simultaneously in 21 cities across the country before expanding to other venues in the weeks to come. To see all currently scheduled playdates, click here and scroll down.