The Smoke

It's not often that I end up watching a film almost entirely without merit purely by my own choice but unfortunately I have only myself and some misleading critic reviews to blame for this wasted 90 minutes.

The storyline is so unbelievable that it makes eastenders seem like a gritty east end documentary/drama. The characters are both exceptionally shallow and deeply flawed, the dialogue is mostly appalling other than a few mildly amusing interchanges between some of the villains and the most appealing part of the whole movie is the ending - not the content of the ending itself but the actual cessation of poor quality viewing that was truly like a weight being lifted from my chest.

I love a shameless "glamorous" gangster flick like lock stock, snatch or layer cake but this is nothing like those. It's a very cheap impersonation. This film is the movie equivalent of one of those fake aftershaves you see a street vendor selling for £5 on a stall in turkey.

Save your time and do something more productive like sitting in the dark alone rather than watch this.

From the start The Smoke feels a bit different from your usual gangster carnage flick from the Tanters and the Sothcotts of this world - which might be why those fooled by the mis-marketing of this romantic crime thriller as a "proper lads' film" might feel a little misled.

The producers seem to have tried to up the ante with chases through underground train stations, exploding cars and a Paris-set finale with a reformed hooker given a second chance in life (and a dalmatian!) at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Not your average gangster move.

And while they don't fully succeed in delivering the next Layer Cake or Lock Stock, at worst it feels like a noble failure.

Matt di'Angelo's turn as Brad, the lawyer having the baddest of bad days, deserves praise and plaudits - he's more than your average soap star and it shows. His co-star Lili Bordan oozes sex and vulnerability in equal measure with her damaged call girl Jodie. Without their performances, the film would possibly struggle to anchor but they act as a gel to the rest of the narrative. As good leads should!

You get the feeling that much of the film is on a cutting room floor somewhere though and that something bolder was on the cards. Jeff Leach, who plays Brad's best mate Dean, spoke about many of his best scenes not making the final cut for some reason, and Wikipedia refer to this 89 minute release as the "studio cut". So maybe a Director's Cut is bobbing around out there for people to really judge one day...

I saw this film repackaged as London Payback, with a cover to make it look like a London gangster film. It really isn't. Instead what we get is an ultra-cheap romance/crime thriller in which a young man is having a very bad day and must use his wits and experience to see him through. This film feels very much like one of those cheaply-made Danny Dyer films set in London, except it's even worse than that. Somebody must have been convinced that Matt Di Angelo had the presence to hold a film together, but he really doesn't - and this is from somebody who liked him in EASTENDERS.

The gangster stuff that plays out is clichéd and unfunny, and features over the top performances from actors who typically play bit part or background actors in other gangster films (Stephen Marcus and Velibor Topic in particular) but are given leading roles here. Oh, and Alan Ford is on board too, playing yet another version of his villain character from SNATCH. Ricky Groves (Garry in EASTENDERS) has a cameo. From the first minute to the last, everything is predictable, and the quality of the camera-work is so poor that this looks like a homemade movie. Surely this has to be the lowest common denominator of the British gangster genre?

Layer Cake is one of my fav. movies. It's amazing how many of its actors went onto "super stardom".Although this film isn't quite in the same league, I really enjoyed how often the director kept pulling surprises on me, time after time. It became quite absorbing, waiting to see if once again, I had the "wrong end of the stick." Sure, a few flat sections, but the dramatic scenes more than make up for it. Great views of London too.