The film follows three young men and their time spent in the French suburban "ghetto," over a span of twenty-four hours. Vinz, a Jew, Saïd, an Arab, and Hubert, a black boxer, have grown up in these French suburbs where high levels of diversity coupled with the racist and oppressive police force have raised tensions to a critical place a night before, a police officer lost his handgun in the ensuing madness, only to leave it for Vinz to find. Now, with a newfound means to gain the respect he deserves, Vinz vows to kill a cop if his friend Abdel dies in the hospital, due the beating he received while in police custody.
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The first song written by the group’s bassist, Paul Simonon, “The Guns of Brixton” appeared at the end of the disc one of the band’s classic 1979 album London Calling. It was inspired by the 1972 Jamaican film The Harder They Come, starring reggae singer Jimmy Cliff as anti-hero Ivan Martin — an aspiring musician who finds himself sucked into a corrupt industry and turns gun-toting gangster.
Simonon — the artistic son of a Communist party member — grew up in London’s Brixton and Ladbroke Grove, where he saw the black population facing similar issues. By the 1970s he witnessed the optimism of the Windrush generation souring as they struggled with social and economic deprivation. Tensions were rising between the black community and the Metropolitan Police, whose use of stop and search powers was widely felt to be discriminatory.
By 1979 Simonon had also realised that songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were making all the money and decided to have a shot himself. He was proud of the hypnotic menace of “The Guns of Brixton”’s bassline, but less confident about his skills as a lyricist. Strummer assured him of the defiant power of the chorus: “You can crush us/ You can bruise us/ But you’ll have to answer to/ Oh, the guns of Brixton.”
Lyrics:
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row
You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton
The money feels good
And your life you like it well
But surely your time will come
As in heaven, as in hell
You see, he feels like Ivan
Born under the Brixton sun
His game is called survivin'
At the end of the harder they come
You know it means no mercy
They caught him with a gun
No need for the Black Maria
Goodbye to the Brixton sun
You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
You can crush us
You can bruise us
Yes, even shoot us
But oh-the guns of Brixton
Shot down on the pavement
Waiting in death row
His game was survivin'
As in heaven as in hell
You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton
Oh, the guns of Brixton
Oh, the guns of Brixton
Oh, the guns of Brixton
Oh, the guns of Brixton
