Review of The Sweeney (2012) by Chris W — 25 Oct 2012

Shut it you SHlagggggggggggggggg!

Stone the crows! Would you Adam and Eve it! It's only the old Filth itself in The Sweeney! But the Mark I've got is, is in any Robin Hood or should it be on it's Todd?

Yep that's right, it's Nick Love's update and remake of the cult British Cop show, The Sweeney staring Ben Drew (aka Plan B) and Ray Winstone. Now if you know anything at all about the Sweeney or Nick Love, or Ben Drew; or Ray Winstone this statement will come as no surprise but The Sweeney is incredibly violent. I mean, REALLY violent, most of the film consists of Drew or Winstone, wheedling some kind of short range weapon (like a bat) and beating seven bells out of criminals. Needless to say I loved it!

Please, before we all start e-mailing in with paragraphs of hatred to me, let me explain why. I've seen a lot of violence in films, it's almost part of the course; more then that we live in a violent world, it's on TV, the news, sports, everywhere there is violence. It's impossible to hide from it, but in The Sweeney, Love embraces it, he uses it, he enjoys it, and for all the screams and punches I've seen, truly I enjoyed the violence in The Sweeney and I am not ashamed of that.

The only draw back is, apart from the violence and the scenes that knit those BIG moments together, there isn't a whole lot between The Sweeney's ears; but then again that's inherent to the original show. For those of you who don't know, the original Sweeney was John Thaw and Dennis Waterman going around London solving crimes in the most violent ways possible, it was made in the mid 70's and was edgy at the time. It reflected the frustration that people had towards both what they could view on TV and how the police acted to them, the 2012 edition reflects that if you want to be truly protected, then things have to get nasty.

The Sweeney is a movie that is made for us, it's made for the Brit's and it has no shame in that, everyone involved in the movie has fully embraced that one truth. It's almost as if The Sweeney is a love letter to the rest of the world from Nick Love that reads thusly "Dear world, We won 2 world wars without no help from you slags! We are great! We are Britain! So come and 'ave a go if you think you're 'ard enough!".

Ok I'm being unfair, The Sweeney does have a plot and story but really it's all just divisive for the next action sequence. And yes I know that this could be seen as hypocritical because often I don't like films for having little plot, but I'm British so I don't care.

Fine, have it your way I'll talk about the plot and the rest of the film then. The story is pointless at best, it's all about a very bad man who has held up a top end jewellers.... You see? No one cares about the plot, it's about everything BUT the plot! For example Regan (played by Ray Winstone) isn't a nice man. He isn't supposed to be! Regan was and always will be a bad, bad man. But it still doesn't matter, the films still great and that's the end of it.

The two leads feel like they were born for these roles (which is good because these could quite easily become the roles that define them), it's clear that Ray Winstone believes that Ben Drew is the future of British movies and gives much of the screen time to him. Winstone lets himself be upstaged by Drew, all the rest of the cast comprise of anyone remotely famous who hasn't moved to Hollywood and is British. They all compliment the leads perfectly.

The Sweeney is like having your head smashed against a brick wall for 90 minutes, but in the best way possible.