Rich twits party hearty in “The Riot Club”
“THE RIOT CLUB” My rating: B-
107 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Most major universities have a secret society, an invitation-only clan that allows tomorrow’s leaders to behave like yesterday’s Neanderthals.
“The Riot Club,” director Lone Sherfig’s adaptation of Laura Wade’s stage play, is an angry expose of bad behavior in high places.
The film begins with a sequence set in the 17th century. The hard-partying Lord Ryott dies at the hands of a cuckolded husband, and his fellow carousers at Oxford form the Riot Club to honor his lurid memory as a world-class debaucher.
In the present, Alastair (Sam Claflin) and Miles (Max Irons, son of actor Jeremy) come to Oxford as freshmen. Both are sons of wealthy and privileged families. But while Alastair is a moody, mean alcoholic, Miles is outgoing and open minded. At least he’s willing to date below his caste, launching a romance with proletarian coed Lauren (Holliday Grainger of Showtime’s “The Borgias”).
Holliday Grainger and Max Irons in “The Riot Club”
Both young men are recruited by the Riot Club and subjected to a humiliating initiation that involves considerable alcohol and vomit.
All this is a prelude to the club’s annual dinner, an event so destructive that the bunch has been banned by virtually every hotel and restaurant within 50 miles of Oxford. The boys finally get a reservation in the back room of a rural pub. And that’s when everything goes to hell.
Sherfig, the Danish director who has under her belt excellent films like “Italian for Beginners” and “An Education,” is enough of a stylist to soften the borderline propagandistic bent of Wade’s screenplay.
For make no mistake…”The Riot Club” is a weapon of class warfare, a withering takedown of elitism and Britain’s rigged social hierarchy.
The film has been very well acted and produced…but its viciousness is enough to make even a hardened cinephile wince.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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