The Riot Club
Where: Cineplex Odeon
When: Tonight, 6:30; Sunday, 4 p.m.
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Upper-crust Oxford undergraduates behaving badly fuels Danish director Lone Scherfig’s slow-to-start and disturbing rites-of-passage portrait of the British privileged class’s sense of entitlement run amok. The club of the title is a fictionalized version of the centuries-old secret dining and drinking society modelled on Oxford’s Bullingdon Club, the exclusive society and breeding ground for politicians and future captains of industry whose members have included British prime minister David Cameron. As fascinating as it is to behold how these smug, delusional young conservatives regard themselves as being superior to the lower classes they have such contempt for, their behaviour is also increasingly sickening. The action Scherfig captures at a measured pace is at its most repellent once the debauchery and ritualistic male posturing gets downright animalistic at a country pub they’ve gathered at for their latest hedonistic hijinks. Max Irons (son of Jeremy) is a standout as a college freshman, the film’s moral compass of sorts whose relationship with a Welsh scholarship student is put to test after he’s lured into this tribal milieu. It’s a pity the film’s more shocking developments weren’t matched by greater insight, plausibility and satire.
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