This week's heat film reviews - The Sweeney, Hope Springs and To Rome With Love
This week the heat team grabbed their popcorn and Minstrels and headed to the pictures to watch the three biggest releases in Moviesville over the past seven days - The Sweeney; starring Ray Winstone and Ben Drew aka Plan B, Hope Springs; starring Meryl Streep and To Rome With Love; starring Woody Allen.
Here's what we thought:
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Starring: Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell, Steven Mackintosh
Director: Nick Love (CERT 15, 112 minutes)
The plot: US cop show 21 Jump Street already yielded a solid movie hit this year. Can our own The Sweeney, updated from the much-loved ’70s TV series, perform a similar feat? Regan (Winstone) and Carter (Drew) are cops with London’s Flying Squad, a unit that swoops down on armed robberies in progress. Their muscular approach to policing is effective, but causes headaches for their long-suffering boss (Damian Lewis) and provokes outright hostility from internal-affairs pedant Lewis (Mackintosh). It probably doesn’t help that Regan is having an affair with Flying Squad colleague Nancy (Atwell), who happens to be Lewis’ wife.
What’s right with it? Directed with panache by Nick Love, graduating from his formula of macho banter, stylish football-terrace clobber and Danny Dyer, The Sweeney is a decent stab at a modern British action movie. One sequence, where a shoot-out with masked Balkan gangsters brings mayhem to London’s Trafalgar Square, is especially memorable. Drew, stepping up to his first lead role, impresses.
What’s wrong with it? Regan’s “bash first, ask questions later” approach may have been acceptable in the ’70s, but in 2012 it looks inept at best, and worse if you consider the unlawful killing of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson in 2009. “You’re a dinosaur,” Lewis tells Regan, and he’s right.
Verdict: Contemporary action is the one genre that Britain’s never cracked, and any talent we do produce – actor Jason Statham, directors Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn – inevitably heads to Hollywood. So respect to Love, but we reckon he can do even better. 3/5 @charlesgant
Via: This week's heat film reviews - The Sweeney, Hope Springs and To Rome With Love
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