Film: The Sweeney (2012)

Cert 15, 112 Minutes

To boys in the 1970s, the Sweeney was as cool as it got. Forget Starsky and Hutch in their cardigans and college jackets - this was the real deal, with hard drinking coppers battling villains, drinking beer out of glasses with handles and shagging birds. I doubt Ken Hutchinson ever uttered the line: "get your clothes on, you're nicked!" Of course, the 1970s might as well be another planet and a new Sweeney has to choose whether to go period or modern day. With Life On Mars with the epic Gene Hunt largely pastiching The Sweeney of the 1970s, director and co-writer Nick Love decides to set his film version in the modern day, while still trying to recapture that maverick vibe of seventies coppers that are laws unto themselves. The result is a misfire: The Sweeney is a deeply stupid, brutish and charmless endeavour.

Damien Lewis as Haskins, Regan's boss and Regan himself, Ray Winstone

Ray Winstone takes on the role John Thaw made his own but he's basically just playing his usual screen hard man persona. His Jack Regan is paired with the former Plan B, now Ben Drew, as George Carter. With the age gap between the pair much larger than between Thaw and Dennis Waterman, the relationship is more mentor and pupil than two mates, although Regan makes a rubbish teacher, his methods consisting of hitting as many people as possible, either with his fists, head or a baseball bat. The main problem with the film is Regan's character: apart from the subplot involving his romance with a colleague, Regan is totally unsympathetic - he is charmless, nasty, brutish, chauvenistic and also happens to be too old and too fat to be convincing as an action hero. His actions are so over the top that it stretches credibility far past breaking point to believe that he'd be allowed to operate in the twenty first century. He gung ho antics also lead to massive destruction and to the death of one of his team. Yes, I get that the Sweeney are meant to be tough but this lot are worse than most of the criminals.

Regan tries to strangle the head of internal affairs. He's also shagging his missus. Classy.

The plot is pretty uninvolving too. Regan suspects that a robbery and murder at a jewellers is down to old foe Allen (Paul Anderson) but Allen has an alibi that seems watertight. With Internal Affairs officer Ivan Lewis (Steven Mackintosh) breathing down his neck, the pressure is on Regan and his squad to solve the crime, not helped by the fact that Regan is sleeping with colleague Nancy, who happens to be married to Lewis - yes, you heard me, the guy who is investigating him - now there's a coincidence! Lewis is written as a suit who gets in the way but played with nuance and sympathy by Mackintosh you end up rooting for him more than Regan, who tries to throttle him and speaks to him in non-stop macho bullshit. The same goes for Damien Lewis's Haskins, who likewise seems more reasonable and sane than Regan. You spend the movie thinking not that Regan is a great maverick hero in the vein of Dirty Harry but that he is a thug who should be locked up, not given a badge and a gun. His retort to Lewis that The Sweeney do the jobs that Lewis could only dream of is just plain offensive. Lewis calls him a dinosaur and it's hard to disagree. In one scene he's put in prison and is beaten up and I was rooting for the prisoners. Who's the daddy now, Regan?

Regan's only redeeming features are his friendship with Carter and his affair with Nancy. Ben Drew proved in Harry Brown that he's a charismatic and exciting young actor and he's great in this as the laid back but sharp detective. As the film progresses you realise that, while he remains loyal to Regan, he is the brighter detective and the brains of the outfit. Hayley Atwell also shines as Nancy, a character with a bit more to her than merely being Regan's lover. What's refreshing is that it is Nancy who is calling the shots and she definately has the upper hand in their affair. I will warn you however, that Atwell and Winstone share several sex scenes and you may need to book some therapy to help you deal with the sight of Winstone humping away in his white boxers. You may also be struck blind.

Director Nick Love seems to be trying to make a British version of Heat, especially with an extended set piece with Regan and his team chasing masked bank robbers through Trafalgar Square and into the National Gallery. It's an odd parallel world version of London, however, with a conspicuous absence of Londoners and tourists. Its also a London where you can see St. Paul's on both sides of a bridge in one car conversation. The shoot out is staged well enough but is just ridiculous - can you truly imagine the police chasing and engaging in a firefight in a gallery, with no seeming concern for members of the public? The A-Team was more believable than this and, like the A-Team, the villains are bloody useless shots most of the time (unless the copper helpfully lays on the ground). By the end, after endless shots of Canary Wharf, Love runs out of money, with a finale car chase set on a caravan park - yes, you read that correctly. Who needs lavish sets when you can race a couple of cars around some static caravans? Also, if you watched the last series of Top Gear, you'll have seen most of it already, as Hammond and Clarkson were on location with them. A shame Love didn't include some of their mock footage of exploding caravans and car jumps, it would have livened it up no end. If you like by the numbers, uninspiring British crime films then this may be for you. However, if you were a fan of the Sweeney, you'd be better just to order the original series and two spin off films from Amazon.

GK Rating: **