It can be fascinating to see established actors’ early work and in this British drama from 1995, we get John Simm (Life on Mars), Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead) and Marc Warren (Hustle), all showing early promise as lads in their late teens trying to figure out what to do with their lives. There’s also the melancholy sensation of watching actors with just as much potential who didn’t enjoy the same success.
Where Boston Kickout really stands out is in its depiction of Stevenage in Hertfordshire; the sort of in-between place rarely depicted in British cinema that possesses neither the affluence of the home counties nor the gritty “realness” of the north of England. But here Stevenage feels wonderfully real; these guys aren’t living in slums, but nobody has a mansion either. It captures with wonderful acuity the way that this kind of place in the 1990s would have felt so limited to four teenagers. It’s not a million miles off the kind of milieu depicted in The Inbetweeners, but instead of boredom and cluelessness leading to sitcom japes, their options, as they experience it, are: violence, escape, drugs and marriage (too young, to the first person you meet).
For the most part, the lads are lower middle class, but enamoured of what they perceive as the authenticity and excitement of delinquent behaviour. Lincoln’s relatively suave character is the one clearly heading for wider horizons, while Warren’s thuggish lout is headed for prison one way or another, with the others caught somewhere between the two extremes. None are exactly appealing characters, but all ring true. There’s not a huge amount of plot, in truth: the lads knock around Stevenage, waiting for their A-level results, mostly drinking and trying to pick up girls. A near contemporary to Trainspotting and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, it makes a certain sense that in the final act Boston Kickout overplays its hand a little.
