The Corrupted - Ein blutiges Erbe

Based on true events, it is London 2012 after the Olympics. Liam McDonagh (Sam Claflin) is a boxer ex-con getting involved with powerful crime lord Clifford Cullen (Timothy Spall) who is connected to highly placed people like Anthony Hammond (Hugh Bonneville). DS Neil Beckett (Noel Clarke) and DS Gemma Connelly (Charlie Murphy) investigate a case which leads to the corrupt police force.

I don't know about the true events especially when everybody in the movie is corrupt. Liam really shouldn't be the lead character. It should be Beckett and Connelly. This has one good twist and limited action. The thrills are few. It is a lesser British crime thriller.

It's not awful awful but there's not a lot of good in this low budget british cliche.

Having said that i do want to give credit to the main bad guy (Cliff Cullen) played by Timothy Spall. He's not quite up to the level of a Guy Ritchie bad guy character but he's definitely provided a solid performance.

Noel Clark was good in this, so was Sam Claflin. Tim Spall did a decent job too. This movie is quite entertaining in the end but has a fair few flaws.

It is very slow at the start, and spends ages focusing on side characters. The wife (girlfriend?) in particular gets about 25 mins of screen time at the start but all you get from it is that the ex con has a family he cares about. That could have been done in five mins. On the flip side a key scene in a car where you see important corruption and power play moves gets 30 seconds of screen time. Just a lack of focus there.

On top of that the characters are inconsistent, for instance the villain is basically playing the existing system and using it to his advantage. Then there is a scene where he talks about being in favor of brexit. Why? He is clearly benefiting from the system in place why would he want to undermine that? Makes no sense.

If the script had been tightened up and the characters made a bit more consistent it could have been good but as it is its just kind of okay.

When I saw the trailer for The Corrupted I thought this is right up my street . It's a gangster movie ( my favourite genre) it's set in a part of London I know very well and it has some superb British actors in it such a Tim Spall , Noel Clarke and Hugh Bonneville but did it live up to my expectations?

This is the story of Liam, who wants nothing more than to live a peaceful life and to re-connect with his young son after coming out of prison .He learns his brother is caught up in a dark and dangerous web of corruption with property developer Clifford Cullen (Timothy Spall). In a drive for redemption, Liam risks everything to save his brother and win back the trust of his family.

The first thing to say about this film is that it's relentlessly dark . There is nothing happy or cheerful going on here and there is definitely no humour but that's not necessarily a bad thing in my book.

Tim Spall is fantastic as the gangland boss and Sam Claflin does a great job as our anti hero but I wasn't convinced that Noel Clarke was a copper for one minute .

I have to admit an hour into this I felt like it was going through the motions . Sure , there was lots of action but nothing we hadn't seen many times before . Luckily in the second half of the film it got a lot more interesting and grimmer !

This film seemed to slip under the radar when it was released last year, maybe because of how dark it is but as London gangster movies go it's not too bad at all.

It started off ok but just withered off. One to watch on the telly when it's chucking it down