Dexter Fletcher’s family-and-crime drama is worth seeing for Charlie Creed-Miles and Will Poulter, who make familiar material matter. The criminal business is less convincing, but the quieter exchanges earn the film’s warmth.
Wild Bill is a good family drama with a rather ordinary crime story attached. Dexter Fletcher gives the people enough attention to make that an acceptable arrangement, though we occasionally wish the criminal business would leave them alone. His writing with Danny King allows humour into difficult circumstances without treating those circumstances as a joke. The film is sentimental, sometimes predictably so, but its affection for its characters is persuasive enough to keep us interested.
Charlie Creed-Miles gives Bill a warmth that never quite removes the sadness. He makes the character approachable without asking us to accept everything about him, and that distinction matters in a story susceptible to easy sympathy. There is room in the performance for uncertainty and disappointment as well as charm. When the writing threatens to settle for a familiar type, Creed-Miles supplies enough hesitation to suggest someone who cannot be understood quite so quickly.
Will Poulter is equally important as Dean, a teenager whose responsibilities interfere with being young. We were moved by his struggle to manage those demands while still wanting an ordinary teenage life. Poulter makes the strain convincing without turning Dean into an advertisement for youthful resilience, and his exchanges with Creed-Miles give the film its strongest scenes. Fletcher is wise to let their relationship develop at a measured pace rather than insist on our sympathy immediately.
That patience is also the strongest feature of Stuart Gazzard’s editing. The quieter storytelling gives the performances time to register, which matters more here than keeping the crime plot moving briskly. George Richmond’s cinematography supports Fletcher’s intimate approach; the attention stays on people rather than making their surroundings the principal attraction. Murray McKeown’s production design works best in the same supporting capacity, giving the actors a credible setting without demanding that we stop to admire it.
Christian Henson’s music serves a film already willing to tell us how to feel. We prefer the restraint of the acting to the more emphatic emotional guidance, especially when the writing has made its point clearly enough. Sentiment itself is not the problem: these characters deserve tenderness. The difficulty comes when the film makes their troubles too easily legible, leaving the actors to restore the awkwardness and uncertainty that make the central relationship convincing.
The supporting criminal characters are less successfully rescued from familiarity. Fletcher and King find sharp dialogue, but some of the people speaking it remain recognisable gangster types, and the predictable plotting limits the threat they can carry. Against the expectations of a British crime drama, the film is more assured about family tensions than intimidation. Its humour helps, and Fletcher generally keeps the changes between comedy and drama from feeling forced, even when the crime material is less distinctive.
At 98 minutes, there is enough space for these performances without an exhausting commitment to the weaker material. The film rewards an interest in people coping imperfectly with responsibilities, particularly when Poulter and Creed-Miles are together. Choose it for them, and allow the gangsters their interruptions.
