Jacob Whiting

The protagonists in our film are teenage boys who belong to a gang, they are

British and most likely unemployed which is why they steal from houses.

The antagonist is a late 30s aged ex convict who lives in this rundown house as he is unemployed as well, he too belongs

to a gang however it is not the same as the one that the protagonists belong to.

The characters are typical of gangster movies however the opening title sequences we

analysed were for films that related to ours but didn’t actually have a similar storyline.

However the fact that our protagonists are so young is not typical of thrillers or gangster movies with the exception of brick which

features teenage protagonists. I think that the antagonist is quite typical of thrillers due to his

menacing nature however the protagonists don’t seem like clever criminals and they

aren’t very typical of thrillers.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Brick

The antagonist is presented as a menacing character by having the room he is sleeping in quite dark and when he swings his legs out of bed they make a loud booming sound on the floor to reinforce the fact that he is a powerful

person. The protagonists are presented as fairly normal teenagers with their costumes

being average clothes for a teenager however they seem more like criminals when they

break into the building and start stealing from it.

Our choice of mise-en-scene for the protagonists gives the audience the idea that

these guys are just teenagers who don’t really know what they are doing, this is done by having them wearing simple jacket and jeans and walking round the building very

cautiously not exactly coming with a plan of what to do. The antagonist in the bed is not shown in full however it is obvious that he is

the bad guy as he acts very calmly in the situation. For example, when the box is

dropped and he is woken up he just opens his eyes and stares for a couple of seconds before swinging his legs out of bed which

shows he has experience and isn’t nervous in the situation which is the opposite of the

protagonists.

Despite the fact that our characters are quite different from the characters we looked at in other films I think there is a similarity between them and

Robert in Enemy of the State due to the fact that they both seem like they don’t know what to do when dropped in a situation where they are having to do something abnormal to them. The determined and relaxed attitude of the antagonist is typical of thriller villains as they are often the ones

pursuing enemies or the ones that feel in power.