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TThe story behind the making of the 2005 British film Breakin’ the Cycle is even more interesting than the film itself. No one can say for sure, as the rough cut was confiscated by the Met police and the footage was deemed lost. But the origin of this film and its release is amazing. Two of Hackney’s drug dealers try to go straight and become filmmakers. It is a strange combination of comedic chaos, accidental stabbings, drug money and shootings, big dreams of creating a different life through art, and, in the end, tragedy. The filmmakers had to focus on the real class struggles, and the leading film industry, perhaps racism.
The singers included the rapper Lethal Bizzle, and Bradley McIntosh from the pop group S Club 7. If McIntosh was seriously trying to escape his white image in the center of pop, he was not the only one who was trying to escape something, although the metal was too high for others. Colin Browne, the leader of Hackney’s Love of Money gang, wrote the film while in prison for cocaine smuggling, and directed it; he had plans to attend the Cannes film festival. Browne would be killed shortly after filming.
The story is told in a new BBC podcast, Shadow World: Breakin’ The Cycle, by Lewis Albrow, the film’s editor. Over the past 20 years, he has been associated with D, who was Browne’s right-hand man who starred in the film, and went to prison for drug dealing. “Sometimes, he would find me and say: ‘One day we will finish this film, to honor Colin’s legacy.’ “After entering prison, says Albrow, “he came out a changed man. It was time to go back and ask him questions – was he really telling the truth about wanting to quit? He is the central voice of the podcast. “
Now a regular editor and director, back in 2005 Albrow was trying to break into film editing when he answered an online ad. Did you feel nervous from the beginning? “Because I was so green, I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” Albrow said. For example, the noise was all over the place and some of it was unusable, but it started to work.”
Bradley McIntosh was cast as a drug dealer. At that time, S Club 7 had ended and he was working on his own, “A lot of R&B, trying to find a way to release pop pop and be taken too seriously. I thought that (film role) was a great opportunity for me to cross over.” He participated in films and TV shows of S Club, but this was his first role (Albrow says that he “gives an amazing performance”).
McIntosh knew more about Browne’s world than his youthful image suggests. “When I grew up among other people, I was used to certain behaviors. They didn’t know about the lives of Browne and D at first, and they thought that the film came from people who, like him, they had only seen. “I don’t think it jumped until maybe in the middle of filming that it came from (their) reality,” he says.
It was a fun set. “We became a family, lots of laughs every day. But there were some situations that were scary.” Filming on location in east London with his friends J-Rock and Randy – from south London hip-hop group Big Brovaz – some of the lads thought they were filming a music video on their set. “They were like: ‘They can’t come here. You have to move, or we’re going to blow up the car.’ McIntosh smiles at Zoom. “I saw that Colin was very angry, but he did the right thing.” I think in Colin’s world, he wouldn’t want to show weakness, but he said, ‘Look, we’re going to go, but we’re going to come back,’ and we did.
Albrow’s work “was to give the vision of (Browne). It was his voice, but I had to understand. When you call the crime film Breakin’ Cycle, you are establishing your place – this is a message of hope. His central idea, I think, was to understand that in his world it belongs to everyone who is trying to escape. And it is not my world.” He talked for a long time with Browne about his life. “He’s like: ‘You’re a white middle-aged man walking around (near west London) Hounslow, I’m a Black man who grew up in Hackney. We’ve had very different lives, and we see the world in a very different way.’ But he was on his way. It was his first film. He gets out of prison and makes it. He said: ‘I want to do something. I have to do something right.’”
The transferable skill between drug dealing and filmmaking is definitely the entrepreneurial spirit and the resistance to fear. Albrow said: “There’s an indomitable thing going on. “Colin was a businessman. His business was a bad one that hurt people and hurt the community, but (he had) the ability to make movies as a businessman and as a producer.” A lot of filmmakers who are just starting out go into it without fear, says Albrow, but Brown and D were also tough. They weren’t too afraid. Both of them survived years and got out of prison, says Albrow. “It’s a tough place to be. He’s going to make a movie, and he’s going to do some corporate crime – whatever he got from the elite, slightly closed-off people of the film and TV industry… “For example, when he tried to rent an expensive camera to shoot and was refused, he just went out and bought one.
Neither McIntosh nor Albrow knew that Browne and D continued to sell drugs while making the film. McIntosh said: “They did a good job of keeping us from doing things rationally. “I think it’s amazing, okay, I call it professionalism?” Albrow says: “I believed they were ex-criminals and left that life. It wasn’t until 20 years later, going back and talking to D, that I understood what was going on. They were running two businesses at the same time, and exiting was not as easy as they thought.
Both say that the film does not glorify gang violence, or life. The original director came from the music videos, but he dropped out about a third of the way through and Browne took over. Albrow said, “This changed from a sentimental story to a “heartfelt, romantic story about friendships and relationships.” It’s about the connection between these characters, their loyalty, their betrayal.
Browne’s death at the age of 38 – shot and stabbed after he intervened in an argument – was a shock. Albrow and the rest of the crew tried to continue, but D was arrested and imprisoned and the film fell through. At the time, says McIntosh: “It’s not that the film doesn’t exist anymore—that somebody’s lost their life, it’s about somebody, a father, a brother. It could have taken its place in the middle of a London crime drama, like Bullet Boy and Rollin’ and the Nines, which came out at the same time.
Albrow recalls that D collected the photo from him before he was sent to prison, and for years he thought his copy had died on an old hard drive. Not so long ago, an expert was able to resurrect the car – “it was an amazing day” – and now he has the opportunity to find everything that was shot. For the past six months, Albrow has been working on it and hopes to install it. Albrow said that the main point of the film is about “changing your life, and how to start.”
