Life &amp; Lyrics (15) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Ashley Walters confirms that his brooding performance in Bullet Boy was no fluke. He has real presence as aspirant DJ Danny, the leader of a rapping crew in the council badlands of south London, where gun crime is just a fact of life. Danny's romance with Carmen (Louise Rose), a blood relative of a vicious rival crew, causes a rift with his best mate Fable (Chris Steward), himself entangled in a painful search for his birth mother. The aggressive stage rap-offs carry more than a whiff of Eminem's 8 Mile, and the holy grail of a big record deal is corny, whichever way you cook it. Yet Ken Williams' script, earnest as it sometimes is, locates a seam of truthfulness about lives endured in difficult and unparented circumstances.