How Terry Windsor establishes thriller conventions in Essex Boys (2000)

How Terry Windsor establishes thriller conventions in Essex Boys (2000)

Background:

The film is based loosely around events in December 1995 that ended in the murders of two top drug barons and their driver in Essex, UK. On 6 December 1995, Patrick Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker, three drug dealers well known to the police, were lured to Workhouse Lane, Rettendon on the pretext of a lucrative drug deal. There they were killed by shotgun blasts to the head while sitting in their Range Rover. The bodies were found the following morning.

Two men, Jack Whomes and Michael Steele, were convicted of the murders after police informer Darren Nicholls gave evidence against his former friends at their Old Bailey trial. 

Location

The first way Essex Boys establishes thriller conventions is with the location of the first scene. The scene starts in a dimly lit garage where a man is restoring up a timeworn car. Lurking in the shadows of the garage is Jason Locke, who, we learn by the narrator is quite intimidating.

A similar scenario of people lurking in the shadows is in the opening sequence of Once Upon A Time in America, where 3 men come out and terrorise a young women in her apartment. This is a convention of the thriller genre as the character is placed in a menacing situation which creates suspense- a common theme in many thrillers. The garage is a convention of thriller from how it is enclosed (no easy escape) which makes it claustrophobic. Claustrophobia creates a sense of danger and a feeling of panic or being in imminent danger. Chiaroscuro lighting is also created in this garage when the light shines on Jason Locke's face from within the darkness of the room. This could have been used to highlight him as one of the main characters in the film.

The road is wet and the sky is a light grey as the two drive around Essex. This location can be best described as being bleak, stark and depressing. The colour grey is a very neutral colour (from being in between 2 ‘non-colours’) therefore creating connotations of being lifeless and isolated. These connotations of the location appear to imitate the two characters actions later on in the film.

Wet roads are also common in thrillers (as also seem in Once Upon a Time in America). I think they could be used to indicate danger from how wet roads are a lot less safe than normal conditions.

The two drive through a tunnel, which can again, create claustrophobia from how it is enclosed and difficult to escape. Terry Windsor may have wanted the use of a tunnel for the analogy of a barrel of gun and that the two characters are the deadly bullet driving after someone.

This shot of the reflection of the lights on the front car window, may represent iron bars of a prison, from how this character, Billy, is stuck in a situation which has no escape. He is stuck in a car with dangerous criminal, in a tunnel.

Characters

One character in particular, Jason Locke, is a common type of character in thriller films. Jason Locke is criminal and can be inferred to being a psychotic individual from his lack of emotion to his horrific actions in the opening sequence; from the way he violently beats a man and threw acid in his face.

The brightly coloured yellow shirt he wears creates irony. Yellow has connotations of happiness, warmth and hope. But the personality of Jason clearly contradicts this. Not only does Jason oppose these connotations but the location does also; Jason’s shirt appears to be the brightness, most joyful colour in the whole opening scene. This just emphasis how bleak the location is.