Villain

The name Philip Barantini means squat to me: I do not recall watching anything directed by him before. In VILLAIN, Barantini extracts high grade performances from the entire cast, right down to the smaller parts, with older sibling Craig Fairbrass and George Russo playing the shady Franks brothers. Set in the UK, the former is completing his jail term, the latter has been left to take care of the pub owned by the two, but he is a sniffer and a suspected grasser with the town's heavies supplying and then stealing a drug consignment, for which they want immediate payment on pain of death... and they do a Russian roulette demo to drive their point home.

Of course, the ex-jailbird knows the UK crime scene backwards and he picks up very quickly that his brother has received a beating, that his estranged daughter's boyfriend has given her a fat lip, and that the baddies want the pub in lieu of payment. The older Franks gets so miffed over that demand that he proceeds to ice the baddies, and dispose of them with fire after some less than tidy quartering with his retching brother's disgusted help.

In the best moralistic film noir vein, the older Franks sibling must not expect to come out on top...

Good cinematography by Matthew Lewis, gripping dialogue from George Russo and Greg Hall. Very watchable until the end, which struck me as eminently predictable and a let down. 6/10.

I like gangster films. I thought this was an ok gangster film. If you have seen Carlitos Way then you have pretty much seen this film, albeit in a more glossy American setting.

I don't know why the average score is low. I thought this was a great film. Shame about the ending as could've been follow up films, but nevertheless great story and Craig Fairbrass is mustard in it. Not original in terms of storyline, but I really enjoyed it.

Craig Fairbrass' gave a strong performance. It's unfortunate that this is such an unoriginal plot and quite overused, in my humble opinion. This is still well worth a watch though, especially to see a surprisingly magnificent performance by Izuka Hoyle. Although, she is a virtual unknown, I expect it won't be for too much longer. She was only in a few scenes but she gave a riveting performance especially in her final scene. She is beautiful and very talented. In spite of an over used plot and storyline, you will find yourself rooting for Craig's character early on in this movie. Thanks to this talented actors ability to draw you into his character to empathize with him.

We've seem it before but this one has a little more emotion around family values, bad life decisions and the darkside of the culture.

It's not dressed up as badass look at me leading role but more of a man that genuinely wants out of the game but just can't.