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The Business
DIR/WRI:
Nick Love • PROD:
Allan Niblo, James Richardson • DOP:
Damian Bromley •
ED: Stuart Gazzard •
DES: Paul Burns •
CAST: Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan, Geoff Bell, Georgina Chapman
This movie begins with establishing
scenes of British gangster geezers, frozen intermittently
while a voiceover (by chief protagonist Freddie) explains
who they all are. Since Guy Ritchie defined this genre with
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch,
this technique seems to be a prerequisite for these kinds
of films. The likely lads in this case are the aforementioned
Freddie (played by cockney cheeky chappy Danny Dyer who in
taking on this role seems to be tacitly agreeing to being
typecast), Tamer Hassan (currently also on view as another
gangster type in Louis Leterrier's Unleashed) plays
Charlie, Freddie's charming boss with an eye for the ladies,
and Geoff Bell (who also turns in another very convincing
role as a cockney gang leader in the forthcoming Green
Street with Elijah Wood) as Charlie's violently mad partner
who is described as 'so hard, even his nightmares were scared
of him'.
The three of them find themselves in the sun
drenched climes of Spain's Costa Del Crime, where they deal
first in marijuana and later (heralding the death knell for
all that was great about their original arrangement) cocaine.
The Business begins like Goodfellas with Freddie
explaining how he got involved with these men and how they
all made a success of their lives. But it soon turns into
Scarface, with Freddie rising to the top of his game
and tumbling off his castle in the sand when things start
to go wrong. Writer/director Nick Love is not ashamed of his
filmic influences, including a room with a palm tree mural
on the wall as a nod to De Palma's Scarface. And why
not? It's about 'avin a laaarf inni'?
Love, who also wrote and directed The
Football Factory, has paid meticulous and rewarding attention
to detail. His movie delivers a great eighties soundtrack
and amusing touches, like the invitation to a dinner party
where the dress code is 'glamorous casual'. This is a reference
to the British casual style, pioneered by Mods with a taste
for football that positioned Fila tracksuits and Tachini sneakers
as the vogue du monde during the same decade. In plundering
the work of other writers and directors for story and style,
Love has managed to come up with an unoriginal and, as such,
unimportant film, but one that nonetheless manages to provide
an enjoyable take on this genre.
Sheena Sweeney
Rated
18 (see IFCO
website for details)
The Business is released on 2nd September 2005.
The
Business – Official website
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