The Riot Club

(2014) ★★

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Danish director Lone Scherfig moves on from her middlebrow Brit-lit flicks An Education and One Day to a roasting of Oxford University’s privileged bullies. That, at least, would appear to be the intent of writer Laura Wade, here adapting her own stage play Posh. Oddly, the film’s script dispenses with much of the play’s caustic humour. Instead, it focuses so intently on the dramatic consequences of the verbal gymnastics between ‘bantering’ students Max Irons, Sam Claflin and Douglas Booth that you’d be excused for thinking Ms Scherfig is generous to a fault in indulging these unruly young men. Who’ll one day graduate to the ruling class. After receiving an education. Oh, right, now I get what attracted Scherfig’s attention. Ms Wade, incidentally, has made no claims that her 2010 West End play was based on the toxic activities and notions of Oxford’s Bullingdon Club, erstwhile host to the likes of former members David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. But clearly it is.

Certificate: 15

Duration: 107min