County Lines Reviews
May 5, 2021
An honest telling of the harsh world that feeds our addictions.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
March 2, 2021
A film that confidently blends unfussy naturalism with an eye for telling details and neat cinematic phrases.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 15, 2020
County Lines shines a necessary light on just how important it is to take care of the next generation.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5
December 11, 2020
Khan is a seriously gifted young actor who can convey defiance and vulnerability at the same time. He makes Tyler compelling and likeable even as he willingly enters this violent world.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5
December 7, 2020
An emotionally rich film that exhausts its audience almost as much as its characters, but which is well worth the effort.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 6, 2020
A mournfully ambient and somewhat ethereal score by James Pickering helps elevate this above mere social realism, finding unexpected shards of beauty in even the most dismal circumstances.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 5, 2020
A deeply impactful look at the manifold dangers our young people face today.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 4, 2020
County Lines is powerful and delivers a visceral gut punch that will leave you thinking by the end of the film: how did we get here.
December 4, 2020
Part of the tragedy of County Lines is in the way the film feels like a case study of mundane poverty, that this story is being repeated across London and in every major city in the country.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 4, 2020
If you were looking for a word to describe writer-director Henry Blake's horribly timely debut you would not pick "fun", yet the filmmaking is so sharp I was hooked from the get-go.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 4, 2020
Blake's impressive and sobering debut displays an inherent understanding of how a cycle of hurt and missing identity can be corrupted at a young and vulnerable age.
Full Review | Original Score: 8/10
December 4, 2020
Director Henry Blake succeeds in his attempt to create a hard-hitting problem piece.
December 3, 2020
This movie should be a launch-pad for more than one career.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
December 3, 2020
County Lines is a film that doesn't run along the usual rails of a gangster thriller.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
November 30, 2020
A nauseous, bleak, and brilliant debut from youth worker Henry Blake, which creates awareness of these amoral criminal systems
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
November 20, 2020
Utilising a measured naturalism and drawing fantastic performances from his cast, Blake delivers an excruciatingly raw drama that never flinches away from its, sadly, all-too-real horrors.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5
October 7, 2020
Blake ensures his feature debut County Lines exposes the complexity behind every aspect of what Tyler running drugs across London means for those involved.
Full Review | Original Score: B
June 27, 2020
Abetted by Paco Sweetman's clean, calm editing, Blake demonstrates impressive control and consistency of tone.
June 8, 2020
County Lines serves to offer an unfeigned portrait of a problem plaguing Britain's towns and cities with troubling regularity. As an urgent outcry, it's potent. As a debut film, it's astounding.
February 27, 2020
The dialogue is more on-the-nose than the direction but the performances are persuasive and, as it lays bare an inhumane issue in unflashy and compassionate style, this is a valiant attempt to bring a stomach-churning subject to the fore.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5