May I Kill You?

As the film opens we find our selves in the middle of the 2011 London riots. Policeman Barry Vardis, known as Baz, is being assaulted but he catches his assailant in possession of a very large plasma TV looted from a nearby shop. When Baz threatens to arrest the thief he tells him he would rather die that go to prison, so Baz batters him to death with the TV whilst filming it on his helmet cam and then uploading it on to the internet. We go back in time to learn that Baz has had a nasty head injury to his frontal lobe, an injury that can change a person’s personality, in Baz’s case from an everyday obliging police officer into a vigilantly killer on a pushbike. He soon becomes a web hero with thousands of followers who can’t wait for film of the next killing. But Baz is no random serial killer his victims have to be deemed useless to society, have had committed crimes but most of all they have to ask him to carry out the death sentence when he asked the all important question May I Kill U? (2012).

 

Baz and his partner.

Directed and written by Stuart Urban and shot on location in the London Borough of Merton this black comedy is told in flashback. An unusual, and deliberate effort to make a light-hearted attempt to study the characteristics of a serial killer, be it a British bobby on a pushbike! He is a calculating individual but not hot headed, and is convinced that he is doing right as he see’s a lost society in crisis and kills only in the public interest, judge, jury and executioner.

 

Frances Barber as Baz's Mother.

Urban explains in an interview that the films theme stemmed from the idea that what if people agreed that they deserved or wanted too die and subscribed to the idea that someone should send them on their way. The first suggestion was to set it in a small country village where the local postman went mad (maybe he heard that the Post office was to be privatised?) But it ended up as a more urban story. The budget did not run to top Hollywood stars so the cast resulted in comedian Kevin Bishop playing Baz, distinguished stage and TV actress Frances Barber as Baz’s domineering mother and another fine British actress Rosemary Leach as Megs who asks our defiant vigilantly to ‘mercy kill’ her offering to leave her house to him! A movie I’m sure you will agree not to be taken to seriously, its very well depicted, the acting is convincing and the London riots footage is made good use of, so what I would suggest is that you turn off your political correctness and just sit back and enjoy this rather British eccentricity.