The Riot Club (2014) Review!!

Synopsis – Two first-year students at Oxford University join the infamous Riot Club, where reputations can be made or destroyed over the course of a single evening.

My Take – This film is not simply 107 minutes of pretty boys holding champagne & going crazy as shown in the trailers, but instead much more than that! Initially, there are plenty of laughs to be had, mostly executed through witty one-liners, though it becomes a lot darker with some shocking scenes that make for extremely uncomfortable viewing. After an amusing introductory scene that informs you of the club’s centuries old origin, the film turns to contemporary Oxford and presents us with the latest generation of students and Riot Club members. It follows first-year students Miles Richards (Max Irons) and Alistair Ryle (Sam Claflin), both are of ‘good stock’ however the former is normal and down-to-earth and the latter is a malicious, fascistic sociopath. During the freshers activities, Miles quickly befriends the middle- class Lauren (Holliday Grainger), a friendly girl from Northern England; the romantic pair have a sweet naturalism as they playfully talk about and erode their differing heritages. The scowling, aloof Alistair however proves to be not much of a conversationalist.

Both are soon inaugurated into the Riot Club, whose other members include Harry Villiers (Douglas Booth), the pretty boy who struck me as the de-facto leader of the club; Hugo Fraser-Tyrwhitt (Sam Reid), a closet homosexual with an attraction to Miles; Dimitri Mitropolous (Ben Schnetzer), a horribly rich Greek student, and James Leighton- Masters (Freddie Fox), the smug little squirt who’s somehow the president of the club. Some have said that it is littered with caricatures, however the film isn’t about ordinary Oxford students or ordinary privilege, it is about an elite circle of extreme wealth and aristocracy. After Miles and Alistair make up the Riot Club’s ten members, the group soon have their pompous suits tailored and set off for a night’s debauchery to The Old Bull, one of the few establishments they haven’t been banned from. By the time this happens, I thought I had the measure of the pretentious characters and the film’s narrative and tone, however as the ‘dinner’ progresses, both the characters and the course of events become veritably loathsome. The film rides like an emotional roller coaster as the scenes go from embarrassing to plain excruciating as the members, fueled by alcohol, drugs and each others presence, become increasingly hateful and immoral, the vile crescendo eventually reaching a climax that’s genuinely shocking. My main disappointment with the film is just when it was working so perfectly (for me), it decides to run out of time, bringing everything it was building up to a screeching halt!

The cast is uniformly excellent. You can tell that everybody was really into their part but the film clearly belonged to Hunger Games resident – Sam Claflin! He is just excellent in every frame! His characters genocidal feelings towards the working class were down right disturbing! Claflin proves himself as an accomplished villain actor, he gives his character a sociopath quality; when there aren’t flashes of his vulgar jealousy & resentment. Max Irons, Holliday Grainger & Douglas Booth also stand out. Natalie Dormer is excellent in a cameo. This film has been adapted from a theatrical play & it clearly shows as a large portion of the film is based at the table in the restaurant. On the whole The Riot Club is funny, at times a sharply made thriller that is perhaps both politically & culturally stirring.