Dead Man Running

'Dead Man Running' sees the cinematic Cockney wide boys Tamer Hassan and Danny Dyer join together for yet another jolly boys outing on the big screen. Except this time instead of playing raging football hooligans destroying East London one shop window at a time, they are instead pushed into the world of the British Gangster flick. Which sounds like potential entertainment, but it really isn't. It'll help you fill an hour and thirty minutes of free time, but you won't be rushing to see it again at the Cinema, or out to buy the DVD, or see to it on pay-television...

The opening scene of the film shows that the recession has had far and wide reaching consequences across the economic board as the underworld boss Mr Thigo (Curtis '50' Jackson) decides to draw in every penny from all the outstanding loans he is currently owed. While Nick (Hassan) is the unfortunate customer who is going to be made an example of by Thigo to make sure everybody pays up promptly and without hassle – Barclays Banking this is not. Nick is given twenty-four hours to acquire the hundred grand he owes Thigo otherwise he and his mother (Brenda Blethyn) will be sleeping with the fishes. Cue a frantic race across London with his business partner and working-class friend Bing (Danny Dyer) in tow as they attempt various different activities while trying to raise the debt and stay alive.

Hassan and Dyer play the typical characters you have seen them time and time again, and it is now becoming a little annoying as well as entirely predictable and boring. Nick is a former 'hardman' who was a resident at Her Majesty's service before taking the legal and law-abiding route so he could care for his family. While Bing is his right-hand man who is willing to do almost anything to help Nick obtain the £100,000 that he owes. Yet there is one gleaming performance in this stiff, wooden cast which is that of veteran British actress Brenda Blethyn who plays Nick's caring, soft, yet incredibly versatile mother who provides not only the biggest laugh of the film, but also the tensest scene as we uncover a secret she has kept buried under her blanket.

I was never expecting a brilliant film from Alex De Rakoff's British crime flick 'Dead Man Running', but I was expecting more considering the decent cast it contains. It fails to harbour the primarily British cast's potential and instead delivers a predictable narrative coupled with a terribly clichéd script. The biggest problem however is the fact that despite being evenly and well paced, the film has nothing which will keep an audience's attention for longer than five minutes.

Lighter in tone than most British gangster type thrillers, there are some real giggles to be had in this.

Helps that the acting is a cut above too, and there seems to be real chemistry between the two leads Tamar Hussain and Danny Dyer.

There's a couple of plot holes, but nothing major.

It's also stylishly filmed and directed, and moves along at a fast pace, and gets a definite thumbs up from me.

I can just imagine the scene down the boozer. Danny Dyer and his pal Tamer Hassan are a bit bored and they think - "Hey, let's make another movie. It can be a cheap and cheerful film noir type thing and we can get our mates to join in"... "Great idea - I'll ask Ash, Phil D is probably around and I don't think Brenda is filming "Vera" just now so I'll drop her a text"... Next thing, and a few grand better off from a nearby beetle drive for the budget, off they go to make this. The story? Well, Tamer fancied being "Nick" who owes a loan shark £100k. Unless his debt is paid back pronto, his poor old ma (Brenda Blethyn) will get bumped off by the elderly, prone-to-napping, enforcer that is Phil Daniels. How, though? Well, he partners with best pal "Bing" (Dyer) and go a-fund raising. Can they find the cash and save his wheelchair bound mother? What do you think? Thing about this, though, is that it's not terrible. The acting is one-dimensional and the dialogue is straight out of the "Janet and John book of daft crime thrillers", but there is some humour and charisma to be enjoyed here and it does exactly what is says on the tin. If you set the bar pretty low and go with the flow then you will get pretty much what you expect from this predictable and decently paced ninety minutes of East London drama.

I didn't know what to expect from this film except that the poster made it look like an honest-to-goodness thriller that could've been made any time in the past 40 years, and that appealed to me. In the event, it's a well-played noir mostly set in London (though you get no real sense of the city, and it's a shame they had to show Big Ben) in which Nick (engagingly played by Tamer Hassan) has 24 hours to find £100,000 or he, and his mother (as always, a superb performance from Brenda Blethyn) will be 'buried in a shallow grave'. Well-paced, with a reasonable twist, it's only a shame that most of the dialogue is quite lame, and everything has a second-hand feel, but that's deliberate, I feel, and we need more movies like this that have a heart of noir while only seeking to entertain. The audience I saw it with, in Wandsworth, were thoroughly entertained.

All in all a decent film, being a woman i love any Danny dyer and he was the films main pull for me and the girls to go watch a typical guys film,A bit lack lustre at times but Danny kept me trans fixed, plenty of action one for the guys and the girls. I noticed a mixed reception from fellow cinema goers, and maybe a tad cheesy in parts but compared with other movies at the moment it was not that bad, British film too so it's a bonus.But would recommend full on action , not a bad story and a good cast, a bit unsure about 50 cent though maybe he should have stayed in the music industry, Other characters put in a good performance and Danny and Tamear teamed up again always seems to work and do the business.