BFI London Film Festival 2021 Review

Psychotic gang enforcer Bull resurfaces after a decade-long absence to hack a path through the people who wronged him and locate his estranged son. His former employers and family are well versed in the morally bankrupt code of extreme retribution, but nothing can prepare them for the systematic storm of casual slaughter that blows their way.

It has been some time since director Paul Andrew Williams revisited his grim cinematic roots, and Bull proves he has lost none of his unwholesome grit and pragmatic menace. 15 years after he unleashed the powerhouse naturalism of London to Brighton, he’s back in the grungy groove with a genre-bleeding Brit flick of gut-churning power.

Like Shane Meadows‘ impossibly dark Dead Man’s Shoes before it, Williams siphons horror tropes down his thriller’s throat, then pumps its stomach onto the screen to test the fortitude of our own. If anything, Bull embraces the mechanic in a more enthusiastic fashion as it wallows gleefully in slasher configurations, torture porn nihilism, and Grand-Guignol gore.

Everyone who infests this grisly film is universally unlikeable. They are all either entitled and greedy narcissists or sycophantic and heartless lapdogs. Parasitic bile ducts whose vile screen personas are a credit to the actors involved. So much so that we wholeheartedly root for the hang-dog sociopath that is culling them so cruelly.

Neil Maskell is astonishingly good as the titular Bull. His depth of range and laconic screen presence formulates a chilling character who can swing wildly from roughish charmer to hyper-violent nutbag at any given second.

A man as impervious to mercy as he is immune to pity. A self-styled Big Bad Wolf with a beer gut that perceives anything with a pulse as expendable collateral in his quest for revenge. An out-of-shape kitchen sink drama Jason Voorhees, with a penchant for pithy one-liners and world-weary crow’s feet instead of a hockey mask.

In a perfect world, Maskell would play the next Bond villain, plotting global domination from the backroom snug of a flat roof pub nursing pints of mild with Sir Ben Kingsley.

Also, on majestic form is David Hayman as Bull’s cottage industry crime lord father in-law Norm. He is clearly having a fabulous time chewing scenery and barking orders at his dipshit muscle. Norm’s felonious empire appears to be based on intimidation within the meat industry and hanging around in hi-vis vests at greasy spoon cafés.

It’s a curiously low-key setup, reminiscent of Ben Wheatley’s Down Terrace, typified by a hilariously normalized slow-motion sequence during a family barbecue, that helps ground the film in a downbeat five-bed new build kind of way. Whether Norm’s modest lifestyle choices are part of a clever facade to skulk under the police radar or simply an inescapable cultural bottleneck is never revealed.

The frequent violence, which often detonates with little warning, is executed with an insouciant relish that amplifies the seedy savagery that engulfs Bull. With shocking practical effects that further augment its horror credentials, the wince factor is surprisingly high, with arterial callbacks to the bloody British crime flicks of yesteryear such as The Long Good Friday and The Squeeze.

Ending with an audacious reveal, one that is sure to spark heated debate, the desire to rewatch this spiteful shitshow of human detritus is triggered immediately.

Bull is a relentlessly bleak and harrowing experience. A squalid glimpse behind the curtain into a circle of human trash drained of empathy by their own compulsion to exploit the weak.

It is also a barnstorming hybrid of crime thriller and horror flick that has the courage of its convictions and a car crash mentality that is impossible to look away from.