10 Globe-Trotting Movies About The Illegal Drugs Trade

6. Sweet Sixteen

The profitability of the drugs trade at the street level is what motivates young people with few other prospects to take the risk and start dealing drugs. In turn, as was clear in Menace II Society, an entire subculture then emerges based around the sale and consumption of drugs, with stronger and more dangerous narcotics fetching higher profits. In the ghettos of L.A. crack became an epidemic - in the run-down towns of Scotland, the real problem came from heroin. Ken Loach is a director famed for his deeply felt observations of working class life, often filming with an eye for social-realist facsimile of the real world rather than fictional abstraction. Sweet Sixteen, the portrait of a young disillusioned teenager who starts selling heroin so he can save up enough to start a new life with his mother, can certainly be counted as one of his more gritty and depressing films, in which a sense of hopelessness pervades both character and setting, not just abandoned characters, but an entire community left to slowly rot. But there's a thread of compassion running through the film which prevents it from being morbidly wrist-slitting, thanks to a raft of fine performances, particularly Martin Compston in the lead role. Loach is adept at fully humanizing his characters, and Sweet Sixteen is a fine example of that skill being used to full effect.