Sumotherhood Review

Adam Deacon returns to the director chair with a spiritual sequel to his 2011 film Anuvahood and continues to satirise British urban crime films.

Riko (Deacon) and Kane (Jazzie Zonzolo) are best friends and losers who live in a bedsit in East London. After being threatened by a loan shark they have to find a way to pay back a £15,000 debt within a week. This leads to the dynamic duo embarking on some desperate schemes to raise the money, including holding a rapper at gunpoint, trying to rob a bank, and getting caught up with the local gangsters.

Anuvahood was a hit in the UK. The home media release stated it was ‘The Box Office Smash Hit.’ However, it was critically demolished and the audience’s reaction wasn’t much better. The ‘comedic’ highlights in that film were a young man humping a bollard and a deranged gangster sucking tomato ketchup off a woman’s toes.

Anuvahood was made during the high of the urban and gangster booms that dominated British cinemas and stores. Many British filmmakers for a long time were trying to be the next Guy Ritchie. Deacon was involved in this movement since he starred in Kidulthood, Adulthood, and Shank. Anuvahood came out at the right time. However, the British film scene has changed over the course of 12 years.

On the positive side, Sumotherhood looked like it had a higher budget. There were some big sequences like a kung fu fight in a nightclub, a parkour chase in the streets of London, and a big shootout. There was a surreal quality to it, like Polite Society which had a lot of martial arts and stunt sequences. The marketing made a big song and dance of all the cameos they were able to secure like Jennifer Saunders, Peter Serafinowicz, Denise van Outen, Jeremy Corbyn, and the biggest one being Ed Sheeran. The producers were able to get Paramount to distribute the film worldwide.

Sumotherhood had more of a plot than its predecessor. The setup was similar to Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels where a group of low-ranking criminals must raise a large sum of money in a short amount of time. The plot really got going after the bank robbery since Riko and Kane’s reputations skyrocketed and they became the focus of a number of factions like two gangsters, an overzealous police officer, and an attractive young lady. Deacon was following the Guy Ritchie playbook that had many storylines going on until they collided at the end.

I did like the opening which did satire ‘hood’ type films where Riko and Kane were trying to sell a phone to a couple of thugs when they wanted a gun. It was a fun twist to a scene that’s usually in these street-level crime films. It was all downhill from there, starting with Riko trying to chat up a woman whilst holding a sword. This was a film whose style of comedy was simply to scream and shriek loudly whilst speaking with impenetrable London slang. Richie Campbell was especially irritating as a hot-headed gangster who yells and mugs his way through the film.

Some of the jokes came across more as sketches than as scenes. There was a moment when Kane arranges to get a gun from some schoolkids, and their robbery attempt to rob Lethal Bizzle gets interrupted by a transvestite. This was a film that had a traffic warden coming out of a bin. It came across as random, something that a child would think was funny. This is a film that showed Ed Sheeran shitting in a bush. There was also a fair amount of humour based on mental health and homophobia which made the film feel like it was written by a teenager trying to be edgy.

There were some attempts at social commentary. The most obvious was through Jeremy Corbyn’s cameo where he states the people who commit crimes were victims of ‘10 years of Tory failure.’ It wasn’t funny or particularly insightful and seemed to be done to appeal to a certain audience. Vas Blackwood’s role also attempted some social commentary since he was a black police detective who was misogynistic, and racist towards black people. The filmmakers wanted to show that the Met had such big problems that it affected anyone who joined. However, his character was one joke.

Sumotherhood performed the cardinal sin for a comedy, it was painfully unfunny. It also suffered from being an outdated parody of a genre that’s in decline. It was made for masochists.