The Crew

"Ged" (Scot Williams) has made a very good living over the years and now lives an outwardly respectable life with his family in London. Meantime, though, he is investing a cool £250,000 in one last scheme to raise him millions and hopefully set him on the straight and narrow. The thing is, his lieutenants - led by "Ratter" (Kenny Doughty) are bored living on what they perceive to be the scraps. They know that there's way more cash to be made if they start dealing hard drugs. "Ged" wants no truck with this, but egged on by his pal "Paul" (Philip Olivier), "Ratter" is determined that he will get his way - by hook or by crook. With the pressure mounting on their boss, revolution brewing amongst the troops and the deadly Serbs waiting in the wings to muscle in on this lucrative market, it's going to take all "Ged" can muster to save himself and his family from the new world order. On the face of it, this is a solid gangster story but as to it's execution - well that is just weak. Loads of faux-Scouse accents pepper the over-scripted drama; loads more Anglo-Saxon expletives don't make these actors into plausible hard-men and the whole thing looks like it's a low budget episode from a 1980s television series. Some of it is intentionally distasteful and on occasion that does work at illustrating just how odious, depraved and greedy some of this gang are, but so often those scenes seem here for their own gratification rather than to put any meat on the bones of these characters and at just over two hours, it takes far too long to get to anything like a sharp end about which I'd lost interest after some random sexually fluid brutality in a penthouse. It's based on a fairly graphic novel and I think it'd be best just to read that and let your own imagination do the work that Adrian Vitoria doesn't manage to do, here. This is just poor, sorry.

The Crew goes where many British gangster flicks tends to skirt around. It's an adaptation of Kevin Sampson's novel Outlaws (he wrote the screenplay too), and really shows off an attention to detail that paints a graphic and nihilistic picture of gangster life. It plays on moral bankruptcy rather than trying to spin out pithy one liners and any pretence of cool.

Nothing good happens to anyone; violence and lust doesn't make people happy, poetic justice slips through when you least expect and some neat twists give it a decent narrative that is a lot smarter than the usual brit gangster flic.

Bodes well for Awaydays!

I have to admit that I had a vested interest in seeing this film as I've co-produced and co-created a pilot ironically in Glasgow called The Crews. Which is being punted as The Scottish Sopranos.

So when this film came along naturally we were pretty despondent as it could be construed that we are jumping on a bandwagon when in fact I'd never heard of the film until it's release on DVD. Then the PR blurb surrounding it called it the Liverpudlian Sopranos. LOL.

What made it worse for us is the film is actually very good.

Standouts include the ever excellent Stephen Graham and Scot Williams as the lead Ged.

If I had a criticism of it; ironically enough is it plays like a pilot episode of a TV show itself as you expect a follow up.

Here's to stepping on toes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJxJIT57krg http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Crews/169254085135?ref=sgm

Longtime crime boss Ged Brennan(Scot Williams) is done with the criminal underworld when he feels his luck is running out. But to fund a legitimate business, he has to rely on his crew in order to successfully pull off one final robbery. But one of his crew member and butt buddy has a business of there own, which is getting into the illegal drug business which Ged won't even touch with a 100 ft pole. So when one of his trusted crew member goes to a rival heist group in order to get in, it really jeopardizes Ged's final heist. With betrayal all around Ged, he must use his wits and everything he learned and with the help of his former adversary Franner(Stephen Graham) to get everything on track. This is a good crime movie, but at times it felt way longer than it should have been. This film is about 123 mins, but they could have easily cut 20 or maybe 30 min and it would have been a fast paced and better. Sometimes the slow pace makes a movie better, but this isn't the case for "The Crew" and it felt that it started to drag in sometimes and incoherent. The plot was creative, but not original but I just didn't care about any of the characters except maybe Ged. But this is cause everyone else besides Ged, is annoyingly retarded so you don't care what happens to them. I mean in movies like this you know who the bad guys are, but for instance in Guy Ritchie's movies, he actually makes them funny and likable, but this isn't the case for "The Crew". This movie may please audiences that enjoy crime/drama movies, but it just didn't have anything that really got my attention.

4.5/10

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Liverpool crime boss Ged Brennan (Scot Williams) has built a successful and respected life for himself on the back of a life of crime but bad intelligence on his last scam lead to it all being a waste of time. Even worse, a figure head of crime in his local area has just turned up dead and the hunt is on for who did it. But Ged's planning to get back into the game with his biggest heist yet- but the threat of betrayal all around him is becoming a real problem.

All the ingriedients were here for a perfect crime film- realistic and brutal, The Crew on paper must have seemed perfect. But while it's far from an awful attempt to bring the world of the Liverpool crime scene to life, it still feels like a bit of a mess and like it falls short of what it first set out to do. And even worse, it seems to be one of those films where the trailer has made it look more exciting than it really is.

The main problem is how disjointed and incoherent it all feels, with the main story and the sub plot seeming to morph over each other and taking up too much time, and with the film running at maybe a bit too ambitious just under two hours, this is even more of a problem. While I understand the film intended to be brutal and hard hitting, a tooled up gang in forensic outfits filming their slaughter of a group of drug addicts in a flat, a scene where a male and female junkie are made to perform sleazy sex acts for and on two crooks with bisexual leanings and a leary Scots character who gets his thrills from strippers and fat hookers all feel a tad gratuitous and added merely for shock value. Far from awful, but could have been a lot better if done with a bit more restraint and focus. **