HARD BOILED SWEETS (2011) Dir: David L.G Hughes

I had always intended on reviewing this film after I'd seen it because the idea behind it had intrigued me greatly and because of this my hopes had been raised to a level that they rarely ever reach because of it's apparent originality. Well I can tell you that a deaf, blind and dumb monkey with a two broken arms has more originality than this film and that's me being nice about it. Anyway check out the review after the jump to find out why is disliked this film so much. 

I love a gangster film as much as the next guy but I’m bored to tears with amount of craptastic British gangster films that we've been inundated with since Guy Ritchie brought us Lock Stock, now it's not to say that every British gangster film has been utter cheese balls but a fair few have sucked major cockage. There have obviously been some exceptions with certain films such as the brilliant Gangster No.1, The Bank Job and Ritchie's own Snatch and Rock'n'Rolla, but I’m talking about the straight up low rent gangster movies we get on a weekly fucking basis in the U.K. Now I was eager to check this film out mainly because I’d heard through the grapevine and from other various sources that this was a corker of a film, a film that was trying something different in a genre that has kept Danny Dyer and Tamer Hassan busy boys for the last 10 odd years, so I was anxious to find out what all the fuss was about. Well for a start it doesn't star Danny Dyer or Tamer Hassan so it's doing something right already. But what piqued my interest in the film was that it was supposedly not a gangster film but a modern day film noir, a what if film. What if you took the works of Dashiel Hammet and dropped it into 21^st century South End. Well all the way through the making of documentary, the stars and crew kept stating it wasn't a gangster film it was a film noir, but it has gangsters in it, talking mockney geezer dialogue and generally being gangstery. Sure noir had it's fair share of gangsters back in the 30s and 40s but they were never referred to as gangster pictures. I can see how they would think this was film noir, the plot has an ex-con forced into pulling a heist by a corrupt copper, who wants him to steal money from a gangster. Pretty interesting noir template there wouldn't you think. Well this is where they fuck it up in spades, for a start, there are way to many characters in the film including a pimp who doesn't really add anything to the film, a pair of black gangsters who also want the money but are underused immensely, a gangster with a taste for young girls who doesn't look like a gangster but more like an estate agent who at some points comes across as slightly gay, nowt wrong with it, Richard Burton played a gay gangster in the brilliant Villain and was psychotic, an ex hooker who's playing almost every bloke in the film to the point where it gets confusing and introduces characters who are never seen or heard of again such as the copper's wife.

There's not a single character who warrants any sort of sympathy as each one is as fucked up as the next. The writer tries to get us to sympathise with some characters but in the end these are a set of deplorable characters that are only interested in one thing....the money. I was expecting twist after twist after twist in what sounded like a promising film when I read about it but the main twist was evident the moment the ex-hooker appears on screen dressed in her Anne Summers negligee and wonder bra with perfectly applied make up on. There has to be a femme fatale in a noir, but just making someone blonde and perky (breasts, not personality) doesn't make a femme fatale. If you look at the classic film noirs, the femme fatale is usually a ballsey gal with a sparkling personality that wants only one thing, great examples are Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, Barbara Stanwyk in Double Indemnity and Rita Heyworth in Gilda, all these women use sex as a weapon but in this film it's almost as if she's forced to fuck.

The film also suffers from bland direction, there's nothing here that pops out of the screen, nothing that would make the viewer sit up an take notice, it's all just meh. Even the lights of the casinos, clubs and attractions of south end are duller than dish water. It's a sad thing because even on a tight budget a film can look good, but this is just dull. I'm all for championing low budget film making and people taking risks but when you say your film is not a gangster film then fill it with gangsters then I think it's time you really looked into the genre you're playing with. I don't know how much research went into the film but I'm guessing it wasn't much. When I started writing my WW2 screenplay I sat down and researched the history of the British commando's, their missions and watched a shit ton of WW2 movies and I’m still not prepared to flesh out a first draft, watching a couple of Humphrey Bogart movies doesn't inform you on the world of film noir.

Over all I have to say that I really disliked this film, it's the kind of film that lies, says it's one thing but turns out it's the exact thing it said it wasn't. It's badly directed, the characters are one dimensional and the script is not good. There are some nice lines of dialogue every twenty minutes or so but to make a film like this it should be every line. If you're a fan of British crime films and want to see one that isn't another variation on the Range Rover killings by the Essex Boys which now has three movies based around it, then by all means check it out, but if like me you have an understanding of the genre it pretends to be and think that no other British gangster film will ever reach the heights of The Long Good Friday or Get Carter (the original) then you might as well watch either of the two because lets face it folks, those are fucking great movies. Don't waste your time with this as it's time you'll never get back and there are actually no hard boiled sweets in the film either.