The Sweeney DVD Review

“Brand awareness” is one of those terrible phrases which permeates modern film-making. The theory behind it goes thus I say I wanted to make a children’s film, it would be better to adapt an existing property like Postman Pat than come up with something original because a) people already are aware of the name, saving millions in advertising and b) there’s already an inbuilt fan base, meaning adults who grew up on the series will take their children. Boiled down to the elements, it normally means drudging up a nostalgic classic with goodwill still attached to the name, giving it a new lick of paint and shoving it out into multiplexes, all the while hoping for it to perform well enough to kickstart a franchise. It’s the reason why they’re seemingly rebooting and reskinning every ’80s franchise known to man from the highly successful Transformers franchise to the bound-to-be-terrible reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Your past isn’t sacred any more. They’ll bundle it up in a shiny wrapper and sell it back to you if they can. Case in point, The Sweeney.

For those of you not in the know, The Sweeney was a highly successful and iconic ’70s British cop drama that starred Jon Thaw and Dennis Waterman. So successful in fact, that it spawned two theatrical films. The Sweeney followed the exploits of Regan (Thaw) and Carter (Waterman), two of the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad- an armed response police unit. “The Sweeney” refers to Sweeney Todd- Cockney rhyming slang for “Flying Squad”. In the 2012 version, Regan is played by Ray Winstone and Carter is played by Ben “Plan B” Drew. The film focuses on a jewellery store robbery that isn’t quite what it seems, encouraging Regan to gun for an old nemesis of his by the name of Francis Allen (Paul Anderson).

To tell you the truth, I got bored of The Sweeney pretty early on. Whilst the film opens stylishly with a raid on a warehouse, it soon devolves into hackneyed exchanges and clichéd characters. Ray Winstone has never been Winstonier, getting to go full Cockney and call everyone a “slag”. Ben Drew isn’t bad as Carter but fails to leave a lasting impression. The only two casting highlights for me were Captain America’s Hayley Atwell and quality television magnet Damian Lewis as Flying Squad boss Haskins.

To me, Flying Squad seemed more like a liability than anything else. The warehouse sequence shows them wrecking all kinds of shit, causing millions of pounds of damage and assaulting crims with a baseball bat. I know they’re meant to be a group of loveable loose cannons who get the job done, but Christ. No police force in the country would employ these thugs based on the collateral damage that comes with them. We’re meant to root for Regan and Carter, but I was on the side of supposed pencil pushing prick Ivan Lewis (Steven Mackintosh) who wants to shut the Squad and Regan in particular down. Regan’s a violent old bastard who needs to be kept away from the general public.

Disregarding the gritty, brown feel of the original series, 2012’s Sweeney goes for a clinical, icy-blue kind of feel with the squad offices in particular looking like a cross between a dentist’s office and an Apple Store. It’s shot in a Michael Mann-esque way which works in covering the staples holding the low budget production together, but kept reminding me of Edgar Wright’s work on Hot Fuzz which did it better and with a tongue in its cheek. The Sweeney plays out like a parody, especially with the film’s finale culminating in a car chase through a grotty caravan park.

There is some fun to be had here and there. Ray Winstone is always watchable and he’s on fine, gruff form here. Some of the action sequences are decent too, including an ambitious gunfight in Trafalgar Square It’s just all so po-faced and insubstantial you might have a hard time giving a shit about anything going on.