A British docudrama about life on the mean streets, 2004's Bullet Boy demonstrates how the cycle of urban gang violence is the same, regardless of whether it unfolds in South Central Los Angeles or in London's East End.

The movie opens with Ricky Gordon (Ashley Walters of electronica band So Solid Crew) being released from prison and vowing to go straight. That isn't so easy for the 19-year-old black youth, who is picked up from the corrections center by his best mate, an ill-tempered hood ironically named Wisdom (Leon Black). The two barely return in London before Wisdom gets into a scuffle with a group of teens over a broken car wing mirror. Once back in the neighborhood, Wisdom gives Ricky his old gun back. While Ricky's long-suffering mother (Clare Perkins) dutifully waits at home for her eldest son to arrive -- she has planned a homecoming dinner -- Ricky visits his girlfriend and goes partying.

Ricky is a challenging protagonist. Passive and a bit of a cipher, he makes some obligatory remarks about wanting to mend his criminal ways, but quickly drifts back into his old life. Walters doesn't add much to make the character sympathetic or particularly interesting. Much more compelling is Ricky's 12-year-old brother, Curtis (Luke Fraser), who idolizes his older brother and finds himself drawing perilously closer to Ricky's dangerous lifestyle.

In his fiction-film debut, documentary maker Saul Dibb has crafted a bleak, unsparing tale about how bad choices spur even worse choices. A chance encounter leads to violence, which escalates in more violence, until the inhabitants of Bullet Boy find themselves deeper in their own hell.

Dibb's storytelling is appropriately straightforward, preferring handheld camerawork, natural lighting, scant use of music (what little there is comes courtesy of Massive Attack) and a seemingly improvisational feel. The style is starkly effective, painting a world in which bursts of violence are an antidote to an almost suffocating ennui.

Bullet Boy is admirably free of sentimentality, but its aversion to dramatics cuts both ways. The movie has an undeniable rawness and urgency, but its characters are a bit too remote for the film to be a complete success.

In anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1, the picture quality is flat and somewhat washed-out, but that is by design. Marcel Zyskind's cinematography is naturalistic and stark.

Boasting Digital Dolby 5.1 and Digital Stereo 2.0, the sound is serviceable, if unremarkable. The dialogue is occasionally muffled (which would have made subtitles nice), but there is no distortion or drop-out.

Paltry stuff: just a theatrical trailer and a photo gallery. A director's commentary or a brief featurette on London's Hackney section would have been invaluable for American audiences unfamiliar with the social milieu explored in the film.

For even the most accomplished filmmaker, it can be slippery business to tell the story of dreary people in dreary places without also ending up making a dreary movie. Bullet Boy is gritty, well-acted and often moving – but its you-are-there aesthetic also smacks of tedium.