Fairly routine... I wish the ethnic aspects of this film had come to the fore more and that they had played down the druggie stuff that we had already seen a million times.

| Sep 24, 2019

The acting is decent, the cinematography is well executed, and the music is on point, but the delivery and the tone are completely mismatched.

| Mar 15, 2019

What sets Elba's movie apart is the distinctive world he creates, in the rhythm of the music, in the raw, gritty poetry of the language, and in the powerful mythology it mines.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 15, 2019

While "Yardie" hits familiar beats, viewers get the sense they're on Elba's turf.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 15, 2019

The film is saddled with an extraneous narration that mercilessly distracts the viewer.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 15, 2019

Yardie is a sprawling drug-world saga, but whatever narrative flaws it has are helped out by an infectious selection of dub-heavy reggae tracks and an authentically gritty sense of period and place.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 14, 2019

Headley's book is a hard nugget crackling with urgency. This feels like soft-boiled pulp.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 14, 2019

Elba brings care to the film's performances, period look and musical elements. But the freeze frames, needless voice-over bits and stalled narrative momentum undercut the picture's potential power and uniqueness.

| Mar 14, 2019

Elba grew up in Hackney, and also worked as a D.J., and his familiarity with the community is visible in the movie's evocation of a tumultuous world suffused with lowlife scheming and thumping tunes.

| Mar 14, 2019

Elba has a nice day job acting and he ought to stick with it.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 12, 2019

There wouldn't be a long list of "ifs," had Yardie been stripped down to its core.

| Mar 11, 2019

The film's tendency to break the "show, don't tell" directive becomes especially irksome in its homestretch.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 9, 2019

This is a film about the pressures and demands of making another country your own. Too often, however, the viewer will feel as befuddled as the protagonist.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 10, 2018

Obviously Idris Elba is very well-versed in the music and the style and the cultures that this story is dealing with and he evokes them in such a way that you feel that you are really there.

| Sep 6, 2018

If [Elba's] first film often looks good and always sounds great, beneath its skin it is short of heart and soul.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 5, 2018

The performances aren't bad (Ameen's charisma eclipses the expositional dialogue), but the stakes feel low and the characters gangster-movie generic.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 4, 2018

Right from the outset, Elba gives his film a mythic dimension.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2018

Cosy clichés such as these undercut the rawness of the material - which is a shame, because Elba's visual sense and handling of actors suggest a strong future behind the camera. At least it shows he's human.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2018

So, a disappointment, sadly, but I did not fall to my knees and bellow 'Noooooooo.' Just wasn't in the mood.

| Aug 30, 2018

Enjoyable, but so deeply conventional that it feels a little played out.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2018