FILM REVIEW
THE BUSINESS - written and directed by NICK LOVE.
Starring: DANNY DYER, TAMER HASSAN, GEOFF BELL, GEORGINA CHAPMAN and ROLAND MANOOKIAN.
The third feature from FOOTBALL FACTORY director Nick Love is, rather predictably, a lean, energetic and colourful blast of Cockney clichés and in-your-face aggression. But, following on from the cultural blast that was his second film, can Nick Love even follow it with a worthy film, much less a better one?
The answer is yes, as Love delivers his most accessible film yet. If FACTORY disappointed with box-office receipts, THE BUSINESS should become one of the bigger hits of the season. It might even travel well stateside, with a bit of luck, for it has an authenticity about that is lacking in Guy Ritchie’s two capers (no co-incidence that a trailer for Ritchie’s next film, REVOLVER, ran prior to the screening - and it looked utter pony). Though the dialect is still stubbornly south London, and the script is filled with - to paraphrase Love’s assessment of FACTORY - an “obscene amount of ‘cunts’ in it”, the story is a familiar one for the crime genre, with the type of English characters not really seen on the other side of the Atlantic. This sense of novelty COULD endow Love with the beginnings of a cult following in America, and that can only be a very good thing. Especially for me, who was taking copies of his films to the states in summer 2004!!! (-ahead of the curve, ain’t I?-)
Onto THE BUSINESS. It is set in the Thatcher years of the 1980s and tells the story of an idealistic young Peckham lad by the name of Frankie who, after killing his abusive stepfather, scarpers to sunny Spain to deliver a bag of ‘biscuits’ to Charlie, a former armed robber who fled to the ‘Costa Del Crime’ after a robbery went wrong thanks to the trigger-happy antics of his partner Sammy. Together, the pair have started up a lucrative drug running business, fronted by Charlie’s exclusive club in Malaga. The reason so many British gangsters escaped to this part of Europe is because of the lack of an extradition agreement between the two countries. After successfully dropping off the money, Frankie is taken under Charlie’s wing, much to the annoyance of Sammy, and begins to sink deeper and deeper into a life of crime. Initially, the high life is every bit as glamorous as he’s always believed, but then the stakes get higher, and the hours get longer, and both Frankie and Charlie begin to take too much of a liking to sampling the ‘product’…
The narrative forms a typical Rise and Fall structure familiar to the genre, but Love hooks this into the greedy conservatism of the period and, as a result, the film feels more weighty and culturally aware than some of its contemporaries. There are obvious parallels with GOODFELLAS, but if anything Love goes out of his way to reverse everything one expects from a Happy-go-lucky British gangster film. There are scenes of gut-wrenching desperation in the film’s relentlessly powerful final act, after the tables have been turned on the playboys, which recalls the flat-out misery Love injected his short film LOVE STORY with (a trait that had been missing from his first two features). After a clunky opening with, frankly, poor dialogue, Love’s script settles into an enjoyable, pacy story with colourful characters and a don’t-fuck-about attitude. However, though his visual style is terrific, his ability to get great performances unparalleled, and his choice of music bang-on, Nick Love is in need of a writing partner - someone who will tighten his story to make sure that, from beginning to end, the script is taut and consistent. For, just as the beginning feels tacked on to explain Frankie’s flight, so the climax of the film hinges on a character inconsistency, which does jar somewhat, and you get the feeling that Love just wanted to wrap things up and get to his triumphant ending.
Of course, this is a minor quibble, and said triumphant ending is certainly a crowd-pleasing one. It’s a testament to the fact that Love actually CREATES characters in his films, when you remember that such a criticism would NEVER be labeled at a film of Guy Ritchie’s - he deals solely in cutouts.
The performances are uniformly very good. Danny Dyer excels here as Frankie, with the right amount of lariness and vulnerability that he brought to his standout role as Tommy Johnson in THE FOOTBALL FACTORY. He looks more and more like an emerging star in the making, in the Ray Winstone mould, and it’s about time more directors used him properly. Tamer Hassan cut a memorable figure in FACTORY, but was required to have more presence than acting ability; here, he needs just as much acting ability as he does presence for the character of Charlie, and he rises to the occasion with aplomb. Charismatic, charming and unsettling, Hassan is another memorable figure again, and looks to have the talent to carve quite a niche for himself.
All in all, THE BUSINESS is a top-notch film with the broadest appeal of any that Love has so far produced. Powerful, exhilarating and at times genuinely funny, with a kind of crowd-pleasing triumph about it that you just can’t teach or package. Nick Love is a geezer, and proud of it. And you love it!
Starring: DANNY DYER, TAMER HASSAN, GEOFF BELL, GEORGINA CHAPMAN and ROLAND MANOOKIAN.
The third feature from FOOTBALL FACTORY director Nick Love is, rather predictably, a lean, energetic and colourful blast of Cockney clichés and in-your-face aggression. But, following on from the cultural blast that was his second film, can Nick Love even follow it with a worthy film, much less a better one?
The answer is yes, as Love delivers his most accessible film yet. If FACTORY disappointed with box-office receipts, THE BUSINESS should become one of the bigger hits of the season. It might even travel well stateside, with a bit of luck, for it has an authenticity about that is lacking in Guy Ritchie’s two capers (no co-incidence that a trailer for Ritchie’s next film, REVOLVER, ran prior to the screening - and it looked utter pony). Though the dialect is still stubbornly south London, and the script is filled with - to paraphrase Love’s assessment of FACTORY - an “obscene amount of ‘cunts’ in it”, the story is a familiar one for the crime genre, with the type of English characters not really seen on the other side of the Atlantic. This sense of novelty COULD endow Love with the beginnings of a cult following in America, and that can only be a very good thing. Especially for me, who was taking copies of his films to the states in summer 2004!!! (-ahead of the curve, ain’t I?-)
Onto THE BUSINESS. It is set in the Thatcher years of the 1980s and tells the story of an idealistic young Peckham lad by the name of Frankie who, after killing his abusive stepfather, scarpers to sunny Spain to deliver a bag of ‘biscuits’ to Charlie, a former armed robber who fled to the ‘Costa Del Crime’ after a robbery went wrong thanks to the trigger-happy antics of his partner Sammy. Together, the pair have started up a lucrative drug running business, fronted by Charlie’s exclusive club in Malaga. The reason so many British gangsters escaped to this part of Europe is because of the lack of an extradition agreement between the two countries. After successfully dropping off the money, Frankie is taken under Charlie’s wing, much to the annoyance of Sammy, and begins to sink deeper and deeper into a life of crime. Initially, the high life is every bit as glamorous as he’s always believed, but then the stakes get higher, and the hours get longer, and both Frankie and Charlie begin to take too much of a liking to sampling the ‘product’…
The narrative forms a typical Rise and Fall structure familiar to the genre, but Love hooks this into the greedy conservatism of the period and, as a result, the film feels more weighty and culturally aware than some of its contemporaries. There are obvious parallels with GOODFELLAS, but if anything Love goes out of his way to reverse everything one expects from a Happy-go-lucky British gangster film. There are scenes of gut-wrenching desperation in the film’s relentlessly powerful final act, after the tables have been turned on the playboys, which recalls the flat-out misery Love injected his short film LOVE STORY with (a trait that had been missing from his first two features). After a clunky opening with, frankly, poor dialogue, Love’s script settles into an enjoyable, pacy story with colourful characters and a don’t-fuck-about attitude. However, though his visual style is terrific, his ability to get great performances unparalleled, and his choice of music bang-on, Nick Love is in need of a writing partner - someone who will tighten his story to make sure that, from beginning to end, the script is taut and consistent. For, just as the beginning feels tacked on to explain Frankie’s flight, so the climax of the film hinges on a character inconsistency, which does jar somewhat, and you get the feeling that Love just wanted to wrap things up and get to his triumphant ending.
Of course, this is a minor quibble, and said triumphant ending is certainly a crowd-pleasing one. It’s a testament to the fact that Love actually CREATES characters in his films, when you remember that such a criticism would NEVER be labeled at a film of Guy Ritchie’s - he deals solely in cutouts.
The performances are uniformly very good. Danny Dyer excels here as Frankie, with the right amount of lariness and vulnerability that he brought to his standout role as Tommy Johnson in THE FOOTBALL FACTORY. He looks more and more like an emerging star in the making, in the Ray Winstone mould, and it’s about time more directors used him properly. Tamer Hassan cut a memorable figure in FACTORY, but was required to have more presence than acting ability; here, he needs just as much acting ability as he does presence for the character of Charlie, and he rises to the occasion with aplomb. Charismatic, charming and unsettling, Hassan is another memorable figure again, and looks to have the talent to carve quite a niche for himself.
All in all, THE BUSINESS is a top-notch film with the broadest appeal of any that Love has so far produced. Powerful, exhilarating and at times genuinely funny, with a kind of crowd-pleasing triumph about it that you just can’t teach or package. Nick Love is a geezer, and proud of it. And you love it!