Directed by Stuart St Paul. Starring Billy Murray, Craig Fairbrass, Danny Midwinter, Laura Aikman, Andy Tiernan, Natalie Anderson, Zsolt Nagy. Crime Drama, UK 2010, Certificate 18.

UK release Date 18th April 2011, RRP : £12.99

Optimistically billing itself as the British TAKEN, this underwhelming Leeds-set underworld saga is really just TAKEN minus the fun, pace and charismatic leading man. It’s no coincidence that a self consciously gritty “issues”-laden action movie with three of the stars from last year’s lamentable lo-fi Brit vampire movie DEAD CERT turned out like an extended late night episode of “Eastenders”, complete with that show’s Billy Murray as the protagonist.

Murray, whose one-note, wooden performance torpedoes the audience involvement right off the bat, stretches his range in a bold casting choice as an ex-East End gangster-turned-Yorkshire businessman. Now a family man with a pretty daughter (Laura Aikman) about to get married to the film’s token Sympathetic Foreigner, he winds up resuming some of his old ways when an Eastern European human-trafficking ring makes its presence felt. Aikman is abducted looks destined to become the latest bit of exploited crumpet at one of the sex clubs overseen by Romanian mob boss Danny Midwinter. Murray teams up with her fiancée and gym owner pal Craig Fairbrass to get her back.

Writer-director St Paul’s po-faced, leaden-footed movie purports to be a serious indictment of its grim subject matter while striving to deliver the DVD goods for the lads mag market. Brutish cage fights, strip club nudity, spade throat slashings and low-budget explosions unspool in an under-powered fashion before the coda hits us with statistics to make us feel guilty about the fact that This Is Really Going On Out There. Too bad its good intentions drown in a sea of awful dialogue designed to rile up your average xenophobic tabloid reader (typical lines even start with “They take our jobs…”). The level of depth inherent in the depiction of Murray’s vengeance-seeking character is reflected by the throwaway line “What good are the police? I don’t need a crime number!”.

It is possible to make a worthy and enjoyable exploitation movie about unpleasant real subjects, but this movie’s sincerity is doomed by Midwinter’s cackling, boo-hiss panto Romanian villain and by the fact that Craig Fairbrass, as a baseball-bat wielding big hearted thug, plays the same character Craig Fairbrass has played for at least three decades. Kudos to the actor for keeping a straight face while delivering the line “In this situation the next 48 hours are crucial…” right after Murray’s daughter has been captured.
If you’re in this for bloody action and guilty pleasure brutality, it’s lukewarm at best ; if you thought DEAD CERT was among last year’s home-grown horror highlights you might well be satisfied by everything…save for the absence of Danny Dyer.

Steven West.

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