Triads, Yardies & Onion Bhajees!

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

Set in the multi-cultural London criminal underworld, Mad Dave (Dave Courtney) arranges a meeting with some members of the Asian 'Holy Smokes' gang, to mastermind a robbery at Heathrow Airport, behind the back of their leader Chacha (Jass Bassi.) Everything, apart from a security guard being killed, goes to plan...but the two more reckless members of the group are also caught up in a plan to distribute cocaine in onion bahjees, that has resulted in the death of the brother of Billy Chan (Peter Peralta), the leader of the Triads, who, of course, wants revenge, leaving Jaz (Ashwin Kumar Joshi), the level headed member of the group, in a difficult situation. Chacha's right hand man, Singh (Manish Patel, also directing), comes looking for answers, when Jaz's lover, the sister of the leader of the Yardies, gets caught up in it all.

This, somewhat low budget, film, has the look of a student production all over it (though what was to be gained from filming it in grainy black and white remains unknown!) I've only just found out how long it's been held back for, which should give some indication of how people wanted it brushed under the carpet. It's an ambitious looking project, aiming for a mix of hard hitting slice of gangster life and more light hearted stuff. Sadly, all the constraints stop it reaching it's full potential, a shame since director/star Patel could go on to greater things if he got the right people behind him. **

We bought this film thinking and believing it was going to be a great British gangster film- comparing itself to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, we have yet to discover the comparison! The story/plot seemed like a winning formula- we were very wrong. The acting other than Dave Courtney was atrocious, and the most laughable one being that of the main character/hardman Singh. We couldn't take it seriously we found it all so bizarre and not at all close to that of real life gangsters and gangs, I can't go any deeper into that without giving some of the plot away. We presumed it was filmed in black and white as it looked even worse in colour. Had this film been more realistic and better actors used-not so wooden and reading from a script it could have been enjoyable.We had to laugh at the end that we had sat and watched it all. Do not be sucked in to the false advertising on the cover a complete waste of time.

Wow how bad? very bad. The whole thing looks like it was shot on a 1990's hand held camcorder from Argos. I can only image they had colour temperature issues (tungsten/daylight) so switch to b&w problem solved. It adds nothing to the film. The Acting is well awful very forced which combined with the bad editing that exaggerates the bad acting. Again the editing some scenes seem like the whole disappearing rabbit trick, actors suddenly appearing. I read the bad reviews but have waited years to see it. The fact it was "banned" gives it some creditability until you realise it was probably banned for being crap. The violence is laughable if anyone seriously thinks this is what is secretly happening behind the closed doors of London then you must be very stupid. Yardies scene WTF. Its just terrible. Still got another 30 minutes to go, time to go in the bin. Save yourself and your time. To many great British gangster movies just this is not one of them.

The grainy black and white I totally get. The lack of engaging plot is not the worst I've ever known.

But what kills this film from within the first couple of minutes is the atrocious acting. I'd go so far as to say they were just reading an autocue! I've seen better acting from Joey in Friends and in my high school drama class.

I am a fan of cheesy, bad movies but this is so poorly acted, it makes the whole film completely unwatchable.

Only once before in over 30 years have I not watched a film to the very end, including every bad TV movie you can think of... But this is now the second.

Save your money - Go watch a 1970s adult film where the mustachioed plumber comes to fix the fridge. It's more convincing!!

I had very high hopes for this film. It had won the best black and Asian film category at Cannes so i thought there must be something in it that warranted such high acclaim. I downloaded the trailer and viewing it made me even more excited about watching this film. The trailer was fantastic and made the film look like it was the best film ever made. I finally got the chance to view it at the Metro Cinema in Derby. I took my wife along with me. One of my best friends from school was one of the actors in the film, he played a character called Rocky. I had excitedly told my wife how good this film was going to be so you can imagine my disappointment when i finally did get to see it. I just didn't get it. The picture was grainy but i put that down to it being an artistic film. The acting was poor but i put that down to inexperience. The story was sketchy and by then i had ran out of excuses. It was so poor that i walked out before the film had ended. I never do that normally but i really was not bothered how this film ended as it would have made no difference to my overall opinion of it. If only the film was as good as the trailer, it would have been a classic. Sorry my friend, i'm just being honest.