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 don't write many reviews, but I watch a lot of films. This is a solid film, from start to finish. Have crime tragedies been done before? Of course, but this one is good. Fairbrass is moving as the strong, regretful criminal getting long in the tooth. I won't give it all away, but it's worthy of your time, for get the low rating.

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.

There are absolutely hundreds of British gangster movies released over the years . Most have a terrible looking posters and bad acting to match . Villain has the awful looking poster but the film itself is not bad at all.

After 10 years, Eddie Franks is out of prison and trying to stay on the straight and narrow, but his drug-mule brother Sean has other ideas. Rival gangster brothers are demanding Sean repay his debt to them, causing Eddie to get tangled in the crossfire.

There is nothing particularly new about the story in Villian but it's the acting that makes this a cut above the usual gangster fodder .

Craig Fairbrass doesn't just look the part , he can act . It's not just the violent scenes that he does well , it's the quiet, emotional ones too . He shares a few screen moments with a young actress called Izuka Hoyle ( Chloe) and they are very impressive together .

This does have the violence and strong language you would expect but it's not as gratuitous as you might expect and overall I was pleasantly surprised with Villain.

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.