The Sweeney - Starring Ray Winstone

^06/10/2020

Out of time crime movie

This was an awful waste of time and talent.

The main problem was trying to bring the edginess of the 1970s TV series to the modern day. Ideally they would have set it in the seventies and we could all have hung up our disbelief and tried to enjoy the movie.

Instead it was all glass offices and modern London with Ray Winstone playing a total thug leading a police team in London's Flying Squad - but he's a thief-taker, so that's ok then. Untouchable, even though the he throttles the investigator looking into their team for bad practices.

Bad practices including taking pick-axe handles on raids when apprehending thieves, even though they're the Sweeney and are armed with guns.

The maverick cop getting the job done is lost with Winstone making no effort to do anything other than be criminal. His side-kick, Plan-B is bland in his puppy-dog following, even though he's supposedly torn between promotion and following his leader.

And Winstone is knocking off one one of his team on the side, who is also married to the man investigating the Flying Squad in another 'up yours' to authority. The brutish manly, criminal copper outdoes everyone in everything. To the film's credit, the junior he's having the affair with isn't a teen, even though watching our hero mounting her in his grandad pants is quite stomach churning.

I have to admit, I was desperately hoping for a car bomb to take him out and for his side-kick to then have to wreak vengence while we didn't have to put up with any more of this nonsense.

But it wasn't to be. There was much shooting and pointless risk to the public, execution of criminals and torture and, spoiler alert, no official comeback. This, apparently, just a regular day's business for The Sweeney.

A movie that just hoped to cash in on the title, it fails in credibility and, for me, could only disappoint. I wanted these people to get their comeuppance and none was forthcoming.