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.
The Riot Club hands its audience a ticket, as well as a free pass to pour scorn over proceedings. That's a double-bill which should prove pretty irresistible.
Adapting her own savagely funny play Posh, Laura Wade betters it by adding an additional female presence (Holliday Grainger) who sees these Bullingdon bullies at their worst.
Well played across the board, The Riot Club is an entertaining glimpse into the dark side of privilege. Yet it lacks the richness and insight to be anything more.
It might at first seem like a comedy but, with its mounting horrors and nod to those currently in charge, sadly it's clear that the joke is on us.
A film that only scratches the surface of class conflict but Max Irons is impressive as a man torn between the lure of friends in high places and his instinct to live by a higher moral code.
It’s a sharp satirical cartoon of English class warfare and class conspiracy — though it fudges a final point of plot-jeopardy and I suspect a director like Thomas Vinterberg or Lars von Trier would have made it a hardcore nightmare. As it is, the blow is softened a bit, making this more of a picturesque Britpic.
A film which is fuelled by broad, spurious class jabs.
The Riot Club members may be played by the cream of young British actors but in spite of their charm and epicene good looks, this is a film that ultimately leaves a very sour taste.
Vicious social satire is an education in moneyed amorality.
The obnoxious Oxford undergraduates of Posh have lost their bite in the jump from stage to screen.
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The Riot Club film: Jessica Brown-Findlay and Holliday Grainger on the misogynistic scenes that left them 'shivering'.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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