Fim da linha

I recently viewed Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels, and thought it was a cinematic masterpiece. I watched Dead Man Running yesterday, when I saw that the two had a similar plot line. I wasn't expecting Dead Man Running to be as good of a movie as Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels, but I also wasn't expecting it to be almost as bad of a movie as Dave Eddy's Pocket Ninjas. The dialogue is rather lame, the twist is cliché and expected, and everything feels hand-me- down and second hand. Brenda Blethyn had a beautiful performance as Tammer Hassan's mother, which although was superb, didn't quite make up for 50 Cent's less than acceptable acting. Dead Man Running and Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels have the same situation with me as Corner Gas and Dan For Mayor. The Corner Gas/Dan For Mayor conundrum means that I enjoyed Corner Gas, but don't enjoy Dan For Mayor, although I want to. Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels is hands-down one of my all-time favourite movies, and Dead Man Running is hands-down one of my all-time least favourite movies. I really want to like Dead Man Running, but the dialogue, second-hand feeling, and clichés didn't do it for me. I give Dead Man Running a three of of ten.

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.

'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.

Well I enjoyed it. It was just good fun and made me smile several times. I'm unfamiliar with the two leads so I'm not fed up of them. Brenda Blethyn was terrific as usual.

The soundtrack was quite good too and I enjoyed the contrast when the classical piece took over.

Not sure the 'kill' would have been so clean with a sawn off shotgun. I thought they made a bigger mess than that.

"This movie even has big football movie connections it was funded by non other than Rio Ferdinand...that's right I said that huge football star Rio ferdanando..or something like that." He's England Captain and plays for One of the World's Biggest clubs. I think that qualifies as pretty big.