''Beats'' is a 2019 British

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by Brian Welsh. It was based upon a play of the same name by Kieran Hurley, who adapted the screenplay with Welsh;

Steven Soderbergh Steven Andrew Soderbergh ( ; born January 14, 1963) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern Independent film, independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventiv ...

acts as an executive producer. The plot follows a pair of teenage friends in 1994 Scotland who try and sneak into an illegal rave party. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 17 May 2019.

Premise

The film is set in 1994 in Livingston, Scotland, against the backdrop of the

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (c. 33) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights, clamping down on unlicensed ...

, which effectively banned outdoor rave parties across the whole of the UK. Best friends Johnno and Spanner are going to a rave for the first, and perhaps last time together.

Production

Brian Welsh first came into contact with

around 2015, after Soderbergh had seen an episode of '' Black Mirror'' that Welsh had directed and approached him with a new project. While Welsh turned that down, he showed his ''Beats'' script to Soderbergh, who then signed on as an executive producer on the film. For the climactic rave sequence, filming took place in a warehouse in the Glasgow city centre, using over 1,500 background actors. The film's soundtrack was curated by JD Twitch of Optimo.

Release

''Beats'' had its international debut at the 2019

International Film Festival Rotterdam International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is an annual film festival held at the end of January in various locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, focused on independent and experimental films. The inaugural festival took place in June 1972, ...

. On 17 May 2019 it was released in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and the

Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 Counties of Ireland, counties of the island of Ireland, with a population of about 5.4 million. ...

, and on 7 November 2019 in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

Reception

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website

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, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average of . The site's critics consensus reads: "Well-acted and enlivened by an evocative soundtrack and period detail, ''Beats'' draws timeless themes out of its specific story and setting." At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Wendy Ide of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "It's a terrific little film that combines the earthy humour and honesty of a Shane Meadows movie with an unexpected expressionistic section – flooded with colour – that channels the boys' joyful dancefloor abandon." In a separate ''Guardian'' review, Mike McCahill gave it three stars, saying that "this teen bromance eventually escapes into amiable nostalgia and artful euphoria".

References

External links

* {{Brian Welsh 2019 films 2019 drama films Scottish drama films British Film Institute films Films set in 1994 Films set in Glasgow Films shot in Glasgow 2010s English-language films 2010s British films