Screenplay
by Nick Love
Directed
by Nick Love
Starring
Ray Winstone
Ben
Drew
Damien
Lewis
Steven
Mackintosh
Caroline
Chikezie
“Get your trousers on, you’re nicked!”
For those who don’t know
about ‘The Sweeney’, it was a hit TV series between 1975 – 1978 and told of the
Flying Squad nicknamed The Sweeney, and starred John Thaw as Detective
Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as Detective Constable George Carter. At that time they dealt with the low life in
the East End of London. Jack Regan was
originally from Manchester which would account for John Thaw’s casting, as he
too was from Manchester.
In the 2012 film Ray
Winstone plays the role of Jack Regan, and Ben Drew the role of George
Carter. The stories still deal with the
criminal low life but this time it’s with a far larger and more violent
underworld, mostly from East European criminals living in London and involved
in all manner of illegal activity.
Damien Lewis plays their
boss Frank Haskins, but it’s a role that sees little of Lewis in action and
seems more of a role that could have been played by anyone. For Lewis a far tougher role would have been
more suited to an actor who plays a far superior role in ‘Homeland’, perhaps
this was a break from the norm, a tea-break’ role.
Steven Mackintosh plays
Detective Chief Inspector Ivan Lewis, in charge of Internal Affairs, and the
husband of Detective Constable Nancy Lewis, who Jack Regan was having romantic
relations with; in the hope she would leave her drip of a husband and shack up
with Jack. During the story, Nancy is
killed leaving Steven’s character full of remorse and determined to nail Jack
and throw him off the force, something he’d been determined to do for years.
To draw the Flying Squad
away from their operations, a gang of bank robbers who have been watching
Carter and Regan very closely, draw their attention to the criminal behind the
jewellery robbery with a violent ending.
Jack Regan is certain
that the shooter of a woman in a jewellery store robbery is none other than
Francis Allen (Paul Anderson) and staking out the man’s address, waits for him
to break cover in order to arrest him.
However, Francis has an alibi that puts him on his boat at the time of
the robbery. Regan has no choice but to
let him go.
When the team do a
little more digging, they discover the girl who was shot had a connection with
the robbers, and the team are back on the case and in search of an East
European called Makin Trebolt (Kevin Michaels).
It’s the usual cat and mouse game that plays throughout the streets of
London, and on foot across Trafalgar Square in a shoot out between the Flying
Squad and the robbers who have just robbed the private bank they were told to
stand down from.
Internal Affairs would
like to close the Flying Squad down due to their underhand activity, wading
into a heist of gold bullion with pick axe handles and overpower the gang. It’s how they operate, and to be fair, it
works on the intimidation far greater than wading in shooting up the place, as
we often see in other films of this genre.
Swapping the Ford
Cortina’s for slicker faster models such as the Ford Focus ST driven by Jack
Regan, and the Jaguar XFR which was driven by the East European bad guy, for
petrol heads, its a delight to watch the high speed car chases through the city
and the back lanes of country roads. You
have to watch the fantastic car chase towards the end of the film – although
uncredited, Top Gear presenters drove the cars for this sequence and really
cranked up the speed, pushing the vehicles to their max.
As with the previous
‘70’s series where the swear words were longer than a Brownie Guide’s
collection of badges on one arm, the film didn’t falter in any way either. The F words definitely rolled off the tongue
with ease in this 2012 reboot.
While watching the first
part of the film I have to say I was delighted to see Caroline Chikezie, and
this time there was no hint of a cybernetic conversion unit in sight.
Caroline plays Detective
Constable Kara Clarke, she’s part of the Flying Squad but finding any pictures
of her on the internet to share with you for this article is fairly
limiting. The only grainy image I can
show you is the one taken from the trailer and then its blink quick or you’ll
miss it. She is also in the office and has many a talking part in the film, but
the story itself centres on Jack Regan, his partner, his love interest and the
car chases and shoot ‘em up action sequences.
But her character is
great and mucks in with the rest of the team, there are no worries about broken
nails and keeping appearances, it’s in with the pick axe handles and away we
go. I’d love to see Caroline in more
roles where she’s in with the crew and playing more team roles like this. If there is ever a series of this film, I’d
love to see her in a regular role as a police officer, she suits the role
perfectly.
While I was researching
further and studying the differences between the film and the series, I
discovered a few interesting facts. The
first fact was that Ray Winstone had played an Extra in the series, just a
young lad at the time, he had a non speaking role. The other thing I discovered was the amount
of actors who had featured in the series, namely two Doctors – Patrick
Troughton and John Hurt. Of course we’re
talking the ‘70’s here, the decade of big hair and flared trousers and lots of
cigarette smoking.
In 1976 John Hurt played
the role of Tony Grey in the Episode 3.4: “Tomorrow Man”
Tony Grey is a computer
expert who is out for revenge against Dennis Longfield and intends on stealing
his gold bullion consignment. Jack Regan
prefers good old fashioned police methods to the new fangled computer age in
solving crimes.
In 1975, Patrick
Troughton played Reg Crofts in episode 5 “Hit and Run”. A young French mistress had been the intended
target of a hit and run, but sadly a school teacher friend of Carter’s had been
mown down instead. The French mistress who
had been involved in smuggling goods for the gang, goes into hiding aware that
Reg will stop at nothing in order to find her.
Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sweeney_ (2012_film)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2189344/Sweeney-I-nearly-pulled-I-didnt-want-Batman-Robin-sidekick-Plan-B-joins-Ray-Winstone-big-screen-remake.html
@Charlie Gray photography
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0714467/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl The Tomorrow Man
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0714437/ Hit and Run
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