This is the third feature film to be squeezed out of the departed television series of the Seventies, and fans of the original drama about the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad will not be pleased by it. Writer-director Nick Love doesn’t seem to have a clue as to why we loved the true grit, the cocky jokes and the rough-hewn camaraderie of John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as Regan and Carter.
What we get here is a glitzy view of present-day London from cinematographer Simon Dennis, all desaturated shiny towers and winking lights, a Regan in Ray Winstone who is more of an occasionally amiable thug than Thaw ever was and a Carter in Ben Drew (also known as Plan B) who is a pale shadow of his predecessor.
On the credit side, Love is a film-maker who cannot be dismissed. The director of The Football Factory and The Business provides some smoothly shot action sequences in the modern manner, including a gun battle in Trafalgar Square that would earn approval from Michael Bay or Michael Mann, and crunching fight scenes that look like all-in wrestling matches.
Winstone, playing old and grizzled but still able at times to muster the old menace, bulldozes his way through his role like a man possessed with the idea that you have to act like a crook to catch one.
At one point he is given an embarrassing sex scene with his young colleague Nancy (Hayley Atwell), the wife of a smarmy internal affairs officer (Steven Mackintosh), that pushes the film into an area it should never have gone. Drew’s milk-and-water Carter, all flesh and no blood, is a different animal entirely.
The villain of the piece is Allen (Paul Anderson), a crook who masterminds the suspension and imprisonment on remand of Regan for intimidation. Damian Lewis is in there too, as a credible Met suit.
Every update needs something new, but even so this isn’t the Sweeney we know and love. It’s mean, moody and sweary instead, with all the humour taken out.
