‘Yardie’ Trailer: Idris Elba’s Directorial Debut Wades into the Gangster Genre

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Studiocanal UK has released the Yardie trailer. Directed by Idris Elba, the movie follows a young Jamacian man in 1970s Kingston who witnesses the murder of his older brother but still gets drawn into a life of crime that sends him to 1980s Hackney, England where he must wrestle with breaking free of his past or confronting the man responsible for his brother’s death.


The trailer makes the film looks surprisingly solid, and a confident debut for Elba behind the camera. Although it seems to be leaning heavily on tropes of the gangster genre, the setting and the characters give it a fresh spin, and I’ll be looking forward to checking this one out.


Check out the Yardie trailer below. The film opens later this year and stars Aml Ameen, Everaldo Creary, Sheldon Shepherd, Shantol Jackson, and Stephen Graham.

 

 

Here’s the official synopsis for Yardie:

 

 

Set in ’70s Kingston and ’80s Hackney, Yardie centres on the life of a young Jamaican man named D (Aml Ameen), who has never fully recovered from the murder, committed during his childhood, of his older brother Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary). D grows up under the wing of a Kingston Don and music producer named King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd). Fox dispatches him to London, where he reconnects with his childhood sweetheart, Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), and his daughter who he’s not seen since she was a baby. He also hooks up with a soundclash crew, called High Noon. But before he can be convinced to abandon his life of crime and follow “the righteous path”, he encounters the man who shot his brother 10 years earlier, and embarks on a bloody, explosive quest for retribution – a quest which brings him into conflict with vicious London gangster Rico (Stephen Graham).