Victim

This is the first English language film to use the word "homosexual"...42 years after its very first use in film (in the German 1919 film Anders als die Anderen).

Dirk Bogard plays barrister Melville Farr, who gets caught up in systematic blackmails of gays when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK. One young man, Barrett, is threatened with a photo of himself and Farr being exposed. To protect the much more prominent public figure Farr, he steals money from his employer when he runs out.

The police coming to the construction site where he works kicks the story off. He runs, unable to find much assistance from his friends, most of whom are gay and living a lie themselves and some of whom are also victims of the blackmailer. In the end, the police catch up with him and he hangs himself in his cell.

Farr, feeling guilty for not having taken Barrett's desperate phone calls, starts digging into the issue and trying to find people willing to speak up about the blackmails, but most refuse. Farr is married and his wife knew about a relationship he had with a man before their marriage but she is somewhat stumped that he still feels the same way. She does, however, stand by him throughout.

Ultimately, it has to be Farr himself that stands up against the blackmailers, even if it will cost him his career.

7/10
  

My Brother the Devil

Mo idolizes his big brother Rashid (played by the ridiculously handsome James Floyd), who is in a local gang called DMG (drugs, money, guns) and smuggles drug money into their mother's purse to help the family get by.

But when their friend Izzy gets killed in a run-in with another gang, Rashid starts to reconsider his actions and wants to get out. Mo, on the other hand, wants to get in on the action and doesn't understand his brother's change of heart. What's more, he one day realizes that Rashid is gay. This he also does not know how to handle. When he is pressed by his friends to tell them what's on his mind, he tells them his older brother is involved in some terrorist stuff. He would rather have a brother who is a bomber than a 'homo'.

Rashid, who always tried to protect his little brother from the gang culture and wants to use the money he made to put him through college finds out that Mo is involved with the drug business. To get him out again he is even willing to kill Izzy's murderer as a means to buy him out of the business.

The other gang members, who also do not want to associate with a homosexual, try to set him up. When their first attempt to kill Rashid fails they try to use Mo to locate him at his lover's apartment. On the way there it Mo realizes what their plan is and he saves his brother's life, taking a bullet instead of Rashid.

A bleak portrait of gang culture in the outskirts of London, beautifully shot.

9/10