The Sweeney

The style of the movie largely relies on sweeping glass and steel shots of London, while they're beautifully done and almost futuristic, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the opening scenes of The Apprentice they're so disjointed from the film itself.

The Sweeney are The Flying Squad of London's Metropolitan Police, tasked with cracking down on violent crime and armed robberies. They're loud, cocky, and vicious and, if the cases we're shown are anything to go by, very, very bad at their job.

Regan (Winston) is head man and a law unto himself, his sidekick Carter (Drew) and the rest of his special ops team are housed in a swish crow's nest of Scotland Yard with all mod cons. While Winston and Drew have an unmistakable chemistry on screen they really didn't have much to work with. Drew delivers his lines painfully slow, as if inebriated but you have to give it to the guy, he's not bad when it comes to fisticuffs. The gung ho ways and abysmal record of their squad attracts the attention of Internal Affairs, who are just waiting for a reason to shut them down. The wait isn't very long.

England's capital is largely deserted for the duration, which again beggars belief. There's a monumental hot pursuit and shoot out on an almost empty Trafalgar Square with just enough passers by to be pushed violently to the ground by both the fleeing criminals and the cops themselves, by the third time, it was comically so. It would appear that The Sweeney have been trained at the Storm Trooper Shooting Range as London town is shot up in relentless gunfire but not one bullet reaches its target. Think Hot Fuzz not Miami Vice.

The plot is convoluted, the cases needlessly complicated and for the life of me I couldn't get excited about a Serbian Georgie Burgess as the bad guy. While Nick Love is renowned for his cockney gangster offerings, unfortunately this time round he didn't think to bring either a decent story or a coherent script to the table.

The Sweeney is somewhat enjoyable but it borders on parody far too often. It's outdated and overplayed with enough product placement have an accompanying catalog. It would have made a decent TV special but for a big screen outing it's a meh from me.

Another shameless example of cashing in on middle aged people like me wanting to be reminded of the "good ole days", and then this time adding a current pop star to draw the youngsters as well.

Sadly, for all it's style and glam etc, it misses the cold hard mark of the original. Winstone is no longer "hard", especially not when they dress him in trendy gear - he just looks like a mid life crisis bloke (better in a Crombie). Admire his ability to laugh at his ever expanding gut, but he doesn't carry off the tough guy anymore.

Plan B is also laughable - although I recognise that he is obviously trying, but it's not enough. And Damien Lewis is just a caricature that is miscast.

Plus it is too long. I was almost asleep by the "climax".

They do try to introduce humour, but with one notable exception (face in window) it just doesn't work.

And if the shooting accuracy of coppers and ex paras is reflective of real life, then the crims and Afghans have got it made - this lot couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo. And love 2 examples of a goodguy taking cover behind something made of wood, which then gets shot exactly where he is standing, and he's not hit(??????). Remarkable wood these days.

The dialogue was fine and the acting was fine, but I don't believe that an elite police squad, even London police, can be so incompetent.

Is it realistic that a group of police trained in the use of firearms should not actually be any good in shooting those firearms? The action scenes remind me of the old TV show, "The A-Team", where guns are blazing but no one seems to get hurt. Or, rather, it would, except that the bad guys have apparently been paying attention at the firing range. Surely in a real police organization, people who couldn't shoot straight, whose tactics were amateurish, who had no regard for public safety, and who had difficulty with the idea of calling for backup, should not be allowed out on the streets. More than that, I find it incomprehensible that a training program would be allowed to exist that produced such people as the end result.

As fine as the actors are, this movie does no credit to the UK police service.

Unbelievable tosh throughout. Terrible plot and acting, attempted style and no content. The soundtrack bleared all the way through which was the best thing as it covered the characters. Ray Winston is one dimensional - watch him as Henry viii - "I wanna ave a san" LOL. Repulsive sex story between Winston and a female cop. Carter was played by a plank. The Sweeney in the Met could not exist as portrayed in this day and age - 70s is where is belongs and trying to update it was a total failure in all departments. If is wasn't on free TV I wouldn't have watched it and I only continued to view it because it was so abysmally boring and amusing.

I'd looked forward to this having missed it in the cinema, I was a big fan of the TV series and may have expected much more. It was a terrible disappointment. The action was OK, the script; well let's just say they must have had space left on the envelope. It was mostly dull and unbelievable even in an action movie, were some suspension of reality must be given. Some of the acting was dreadful, at best wooden, the shooting, the proverbial barn door would be safe. I'm a fan of Ray, in this he was miscast and wasted, it might have made an acceptable television pilot I'm now not sure if it was worth the rental, maybe just.3/10