As an older person living in North London, I am concerned by alarmist motion picture entertainments that tell me that I live in a brutal, desensitised world.  Never mind those Adam Sandler comedies – my assistant Kumar is currently chuckling to JUST GET OVER IT – I am writing about cynical movies that exploit the London riots of 2011 which happened just down the road from me (all right – in the same Oystercard zone).

I am referring to MAY I KILL U written and directed by Stuart Urban, who has some sort of track record in shock-a-holic low-budget British cinema. His film begins with footage of young people taking advantage of a hot summer, a local death and an over-stretched police service to nick stuff, never a victimless crime, as I remark at the high prices in my local super marche. His hero, if I can call him that, is a young British bobby who patrols the streets on his bike and who is taking the law into his own hands. He is not only reprimanding some lippy suspects but asks them categorically, ‘may I kill you?’ to which they give a sarcastic reply amounting to ‘I’d like to see you try’ whereupon he clobbers them. Now this copper, filth or fine upstanding man in cycling shorts depending on your perspective is played by Kevin Bishop, one of the current exponents of something called stand-up comedy. I always thought ‘stand-up comedy’ was waiting for the 19 bus in Shaftesbury Avenue; it hardly comes. The drivers must be having a laugh. Then the destination reads Highbury and Islington or Highbury Barn. And how am I supposed to get to Finsbury Park, dropped off in unsavoury areas having paid my £1.40 bus fare?

Anyway this Mr Bishop is not to be confused with John Bishop of the bleached white teeth who raised a heck of a lot of money for charity last year. Nor should he be confused with Bishop’s Finger, which I understand to be an ale, and not, as once thought, a clergyman’s rude gesture. Kevin Bishop  is one of the new breed of white working class comedians who isn’t a posh bloke pretending to be working class like Sacha Baron Cohen or Rupert Merchant Ivory Graves but genuine, ‘my parents bought the council house in which they lived, thank you very much Mrs Thatcher’.

Bishop’s copper doesn’t just clobber criminals but videotapes his vigilante action and puts it on the internet. Get this, he gets a lot of hits! He excites traffic, which you would expect for a man in his cycling shorts – well , women find FIFTY SHADES OF GREY erotic. (I’ve got about a hundred shades.)

Urban’s nifty trick is to fill the screen with internet chatter. (‘U fink ee’s 4 real?’) Emoticon, smiley face, LOL, and so on! I know we are not supposed to use mobile phones in cinemas but after ten minutes of this, I was hitting mine writing ‘Text me out of here!’ Frowning face and an injudicious use of a semi-colon!

The police don’t waste time trying to track down this urban vigilante – someone else does. The film is told partly in flashback as the copper is tied up and made to account for his behaviour to a man who he has wronged in some way. (SPOILER ALERT – he helped his relative, sort of.)

I should explain that the policeman has a promising relationship with a colleague who wants him to join her on a cycling charity ride. He takes this the wrong way, which is the only plausible plot development in the whole film. Meanwhile, he is harangued by his mother (Frances Barber) who pushes the wrong buttons once too often.

At one point the vigilante rescues a whole batch of women from a group of sex traffickers, whom he discovers in the back of a van. Before you can say LE HAVRE, he takes one of them in, which really puts his mother in a strop.

Now just because Eastern European women don’t know English doesn’t mean they’ll put up with being a prisoner of a boorish policeman and learn to be a domestic servant – after all, I’ve read TWO CARAVANS. The film trades in unhelpful Eastern European stereotypes, which does it no credit whatsoever.

This being a psycho killer type film, there is no use of that TALKING HEADS song, which did not surprise me since music clearances can be expensive. It does have an ironic TAXI DRIVER-type ending – without the slow motion action, red filters and fingers being blown off.

Urban’s claim to fame is the film PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED, which I think played at the Prince Charles Cinema for two weeks. This film is also having a limited release, after which it’ll find its audience in DVD rentals, digital downloads and the like.

I cannot say I enjoyed it. Mostly, I was not amused by a film that purported to be a comedy. What did it have to do with the London riots? In the final analysis, absolutely nothing!

 MAY I KILL U? is on limited release in the United Kingdom from Friday 11 January 2013.