Expendables UK Week - Movie Review: The Sweeney (2012) Dir. Nick Love

Get your trousers on - you're nicked!

The Sweeney by Nick Love
3.5 out of 5 stars

Blurb: The Sweeney is an action-packed British police thriller from the director of Football Factory. Jack Regan (Ray Winstone), a hardened cop who doesn’t play by the rules, is confronted with a criminal from his past. With sidekick George Carter (Ben Drew aka Plan B) they are put on the case of a jewellery store heist that ends in a killing. But is that killing really an execution in disguise? With pressure from his boss and the fact that Regan is having an affair with that boss’s wife, it’s not going to be easy for him to stay out of trouble.

Thoughts: I don't think there is anyone as surprised as I am to discover that this is actually a pretty decent movie with some innovative direction from Nick Love.

First a little disclaimer if you will: The Sweeney is Ray Winstone playing his typical role but this time he's nine tenths good guy. Go in to this movie expecting people to be called "slags" at every opportunity, "cunts" every now and then and a fair amount of physical violence and you're on the right track. If this doesn't float your boat then really you may as well not bother.

I think I've seen a fair few of these movies over the years, enough to be able to spot a steaming pile of excrement or one of those really dull generic films that most recently have "starred" Tamar Hassan and I sort of expected the same from this remake of a classic British cop show from the 70s. Nick Love isn't exactly known for setting the world on fire with his attempts to expand his film making repertoire.

The Sweeney is essentially the British version of the Michael Chiklis run strike team in The Shield, a police force that bends the law and occasionally breaks it. Ray Winstone is a total badass in this role despite his age, and every time he calls someone a slag I was in movie heaven.

One thing that isn't mentioned is why they are called The Sweeney, the answer is cockney rhyming slang and requires you to know that they are The Flying Squad (confusingly they don't have planes, or even wings), that Sweeney Todd is the first generation slang for it and the derivation of The Sweeney will naturally follow in a pattern of speech designed to make things take longer to say but spoken by lazy people.

The film is a fast paced, adreneline ride as Winstone and his team investigate a bank robbery/murder and it is directed with some skill by Nick Love. He avoids the usual American cliches, even at times drawing attention to the fact that they are stupid - witness a car chase that involves one car trying to ram another and failing miserably - and he shoots London in a way that you rarely see in film. His London isn't dirty, cramped or full of cockney geezers. He shoots from the air, showing London in the same way as New York, beautiful and romantic. It was a real pleasure to see. Even his police station is bright and airy. Very cool.

This was very close to getting a much higher rating but sadly there were a few issues for me. The plot wasn't exactly innovative, the music was overdone and there's a shootout in Trafalgar Square that whilst cool to begin with (idiot criminals unable to shoot Uzis aside) it goes on for far too long and I stopped paying attention. It's a strange complaint to make I know, but the action sequences slowed down this "action" movie.

For what this movie is, it's pretty much everything you could want. It's not going to win awards but it's bloody great entertainment.

Ever been called a slag? Fan of the original show and dissatisfied with the lack of Inspector Morse in this? Leave some blah below.

 

BBBG Goes To Europe: Part 2 Arriving

A quick post just to check in I think.

Some uninteresting facts about our flight:

• Qatar Airways (voted Airline of the year for the past two years) give the impression of being a social climbing third rate provider. Having previously taken this trip with Qantas, British Airways, Virgin and Emirates I can safely say that the gulf in quality of service is astronomical. For a start they didn't provide the special dietary meals we requested and I got the distinct impression that all of the hostesses hated their job and were quite willing to take it out on the passengers. After this trip I will never use them again to fly anywhere.
• Doha airport requires a 20 minute bus ride from the tarmac to the terminal. Bizarre planning for a busy international hub. They also go to great lengths to tell economy class passengers that those lucky business and premium users were provided with luxury limousines.
• I watched Safety Not Guaranteed - Cute and charming, quirky indie comic drama featuring Julie from Scott pilgrim. Just lacked a certain edge to make me want to watch it again - and the always wonderful to watch Wall.E during the flights, everything else was so uninspiring. Whilst Leah embraced the trashy action of Battleship.
• I read Money Shot by Christa Faust and The Peddler by Richard S. Prather.

  Some uninteresting facts about our first two days in London:

• Our apartment is very nice, by English standards its positively luxurious and tasteful. We haven't taken any photos for the family I'm afraid. Sorry Robin & Steve.
• We've had an absolute nightmare trying to use our British bank account and at the time of writing there is no guarantee that it's going to get any better. So far Santander have changed my ATM PIN without telling me, a replacement will take 7 to 10 woking days. As I have changed my English mobile telephone number they have refused to allow me to withdraw more than 300 pounds over the counter until I receive my PIN. 7 to 10 working days. Using internet banking I transferred money to a friend and Santander blocked it and my internet banking access without informing me because it was an unusual transaction on my account. That's the major bullet points in 48 hours of Santander related nonsense. Thank you Santander for helping my holiday get off to a fun filled start!

Some highlights so far:

• Clothes shopping is incredibly cheap. Food shopping is incredibly cheap. There's so much choice, Perth shall be ruined for us forever.
• New book shops are all incredible compared to Australian book shops, we were a little overwhelmed by seeing so many books that we wanted just sitting on the shelves and wandering through crime fiction alone I could have spent hundreds of pounds. It stopped being fun quite quickly and rapidly turned in to torture.
• Finding the BFI digitally remastered Blu-Ray of Tokyo Story in HMV for only 10 pounds, was one of those few moments when I knew I had to buy a DVD without hesitation.
• Crystal Palace is a really nice area, from what we've seen and experienced of it so far it's definitely the kind of place we would be happy to live if some disaster fell upon us and we could no longer live in beautiful, sunny Perth.

With all the doom and gloom surrounding our finances we've not exactly had a huge amount of fun or enthusiasm for taking pictures so far, hopefully we can bring you something much more interesting over the weekend but for now let me leave you with a picture taken in the Perth Airport newsagent.

The science of using the little grey cells mon ami

And one more of the greatest road name in the history of the world:

Announcing: Blahblahblahgay Goes To Europe

Coming soon to a blogspot near you!

I'm just about as excited as can be with what Leah and I are about to embark on. I've spent over a year saving for and planning a five week trip to Europe to coincide with Leah graduate from her Masters degree. We've thrown away so many ideas of where to go and what to do and have come up with an itinerary that we're very happy with. What's that got to do with you? Nothing really but I intend to blog about the trip as we go so it could be fun for any of you guys paying attention.

Here in Perth we suffer with a lack of culture as penance for having nearly 365 days in summer and a beautiful city. It gets a little trying at times. Currently the New York Museum of Modern Art has a show on at our State Art Gallery for a ridiculous $19 charge. This is the best that we have ever seen but comparitively it's miniscule.

As you may know already I am originally from England, spending my university years in London, so this kind of thing is a bit of a shock to the system. I needed to do something fun and a trip to Europe worked out at approximately the same price as a trip to Sydney and infinitely more fun.

We've taken an apartment in South London for the month and intend to use it as a base of operations. Fun fact about our apartment: It's close to Crystal Palace Park which is famous for its Victorian era stone dinosaurs. You can't wait to see pictures can you? I know you're googling it even as you read this.

From there we have plotted an assaut on six major European cities thanks to the dubious pleasures of Easyjet cattle class airlines.
Fun fact about flying with Easyjet: It's cheaper to take an apartment in London for our luggage than pay the extra fees to cart it around Europe with us on Easyjet. Yeah nobody actually believes that but it's true.

Prizes for who can guess the six cities. Answers on a postcard please. That was topical humour.

First up is Budapest, for those with a George W. Bush level knowledge of world geography that's in Hungary.

After that Vienna, it's in Austria which is sort of like Australia only not.

The Danish capital and home of Finding Nemo, Copenhagen, allows us to take a trip across the magnificent Oresund Bridge to Malmo in Sweden. I have a thing for bridges I guess.

Two Days In Paris are up next but hopefully without the terrorist experience had by Adam Goldberg in the movie and more mis-directing of Americans wanting to take a Da Vinci Code tour. I can hope can't I?

Berlin is the last stop in Europe, a city made famous by Philip Kerr in his brilliant Bernie Gunther private investigator novels and filled with cool East German architecture.

I won't blow my whole load just yet but I'll give you a teaser of what might be featured in this space come September/October by naming one awesome thing per city.

Széchenyi Chain Bridge Budapest

Wiener Riesenrad Vienna (as seen in The Third Man)

Carlsberg Brewery Tour Copenhagen

Turning Torso Malmo

Edward Hopper Retrospective Paris

Checkpoint Charlie Berlin

Included in our trip are great hotels, wonderful art museums, at least one West End play, a gig, drinking mojitos, drinking white russians, eating amazing vegetarian and vegan food, book shopping (at last count I had 40 bookshops to visit,) second hand clothes shopping (there's a place in Berlin that charges by the kilo!) and in an ideal world a trip to The Home Of Football to watch Arsenal, not to mention the possibility of directing a short film.

Anyone want to share their experiences of these cities ahead of departure time? Provide some extra ideas to squeeze in to the itinerary? Let me know in the blah.