Son of Rambow is one of those fresh, inventive coming-of-age films that, whatever you may have read about it already, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find has actually wound up on screen.
The film revolves around the unlikely alliance of two boys, and their attempts to remake, or rather, reimagine Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo: First Blood. But, like all great British movies stretching all the way back to Ealing, there’s so much more to it than that. Aside from the relationship between the two boys themselves (Bill Milner and Neil Dudgeon delivering tremendous, finely nuanced performances), there are subplots involving a supercool French exchange student (Jules Sitrek’s scene-stealing Didier Revol), a curious religious sect and a little bit of sibling bonhomie. All told, with its nostalgic recreation of the 1980s and the experience of growing up in the age of the video, Son of Rambow is like the flipside of This is England: one to file somewhere between the riches of Kes and the dreaminess of Billy Eliot.
Acclaimed comedy, set in the early 1980s, about two mismatched schoolfriends who decide to make a film. Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is the ten-year-old son of a fatherless Plymouth Brethren family. The Brethren regard themselves as God's 'chosen ones' and their strict moral code means that Will has never mixed with the other 'worldlies', listened to music or watched television. Then he meets Lee Carter (Will Poulter), school terror and budding auteur. Lee exposes Will to a pirate copy of 'Rambo: First Blood' and, from that moment, Will's world is changed forever. When Lee tells Will that he wants to make a home movie version of the violent action film for an upcoming amateur film competition, the newly rebellious Will jumps at the chance to be actor and stuntman. As the summer rolls on the two boys set out to create the ultimate no-budget blockbuster, but their grand vision is threatened when the leader of a group of French exchange students attempts to hijack proceedings.
