Urchin – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Urchin – first-look review

17 May 2025

Words by Hannah Strong

Warm-toned image of a person in a shirt and floral skirt sitting at a desk, using a computer monitor and fan.
Warm-toned image of a person in a shirt and floral skirt sitting at a desk, using a computer monitor and fan.
Har­ris Dick­in­son’s fierce direc­to­r­i­al debut is a poignant tale of a down-on-his-luck drifter, fea­tur­ing a star-mak­ing per­for­mance from Frank Dillane.

It’s easy to feel invis­i­ble in a city of 8.8 mil­lion peo­ple – even more so if you’re one of London’s esti­mat­ed 12,000 rough sleep­ers. Mike (Frank Dil­lane) seems to take it most­ly in his stride; he’s fig­ured out the best spot to hide his mea­gre pos­ses­sions (behind two com­mer­cial bins) and only seems mild­ly irri­tat­ed when he’s wok­en from his spot on the pave­ment by an over-zeal­ous street preach­er with a PA sys­tem. But to the legions of fast-mov­ing com­muters in East Lon­don, he might as well be a ghost. Even when Mike does receive a small ges­ture of kind­ness from a stranger, des­per­ate and dis­trust­ing as he is, his instinct is to do some­thing deeply cru­el in response. So sets in motion the plot of Har­ris Dickinson’s Urchin, a con­tem­po­rary tragedy that draws on the likes of Mike Leigh’s Naked and Agnés Varda’s Vagabond in its pierc­ing obser­va­tion of mod­ern life on the fringes.

Dil­lane (also bril­liant­ly nasty lat­er this year in Athi­na Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest)is a remark­able dis­cov­ery, total­ly at the heart of Dickinson’s script and lens. His pup­py dog eyes and shag­gy hair­cut project a cer­tain soft­ness; he’s boy­ish and charm­ing in fits and bursts, clear­ly street smart and charis­mat­ic, but knocked down enough times that get­ting back up is that lit­tle bit hard­er each time. Mike’s obvi­ous vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in jux­ta­po­si­tion with his occa­sion­al vio­lent out­bursts evokes De Niro’s Travis Bick­le with a dash of Kes, while Dickinson’s deci­sion to give us only a few details about the cir­cum­stances that have led to Mike’s per­ilous exis­tence encour­ages empa­thy with­out excep­tion. There’s no real need to know how or why Mike got here; the details are large­ly imma­te­r­i­al to his sit­u­a­tion. Yet Mike’s reluc­tance to con­front his past (and his per­son­al short­com­ings) hard­ly help; time and time again, it’s Mike who trips him­self up just as the ground ahead seems sure. His ten­den­cy to glaze over his own sad­ness or frus­tra­tion with a placid grin is only effec­tive for so long.

If a sto­ry about an unhoused young man try­ing to pick his way through the hellscape of the mod­ern cap­i­tal doesn’t sound very sun­ny, it’s true that there’s some­thing deeply melan­choly about the exis­tence Mike is bare­ly eking out, and his iso­la­tion is pal­pa­ble and raw. But Dick­in­son – a tal­ent­ed comedic force on-screen in his own right – finds light­ness there too, and a com­bi­na­tion of sharp dia­logue and excel­lent deliv­ery from Dil­lane et al (includ­ing Dick­in­son him­self as Mike’s some­time mate Nathan) keep the audi­ence on their toes. Urchin is nev­er relent­less­ly grim, even if it finds enough bleak moments that Leigh com­par­isons are well-earned. Nor is this a pos­tur­ing issue’ movie, peer­ing down at London’s rough sleep­ers with a patro­n­is­ing pat on the shoul­der. There’s a clear under­stand­ing of the forces that lead peo­ple to addic­tion and home­less­ness, and how with­out prop­er infra­struc­ture and sup­port, willpow­er can’t sus­tain recov­ery alone. Dick­in­son affords more ten­der­ness to his pro­tag­o­nist than Lon­don is will­ing to, but it’s also clear Mike’s no angel (nor should he have to be to earn our empa­thy). Instead he’s famil­iar in his speci­fici­ty, emblem­at­ic of thou­sands slip­ping through the cracks as those in pow­er show more and more con­tempt for the most vulnerable.

As for Har­ris Dick­in­son, it’s only mild­ly galling to see how bloody good he is at every­thing he turns his mind to, here on writ­ing, direct­ing, pro­duc­ing (through his pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Devi­sio with Archie Pearch) and sup­port­ing actor duties, yet deft­ly refut­ing any van­i­ty project alle­ga­tions by virtue of cre­at­ing a phe­nom­e­nal­ly impres­sive debut feature.

To keep cel­e­brat­ing the craft of film, we have to rely on the sup­port of our mem­bers. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.

You might like