STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Frank (Richard Coyle) is a London drug dealer, whose friend Tony (Bronson Webb) brings him in on a deal that could net him some serious dough. He tries to rope Eastern European crime boss Milo (Zlatko Buric) in on the deal, but things go pear shaped when there is an unexpected police bust and he is forced to dump his stash in a pond. Now in major debt to Milo, Frank finds himself in a desperate race against time to come up with the cash he owes...or else.
Luis Prieto, the man behind the recent hit thriller Drive, here takes Nicolas Winding Refn's cult Danish original from the nineties, and injects it with the same drowned out, moody style, as well as the grim, gory violence he employed with Ryan Gosling. Given the original film's critical raving and cult status, it probably had a big enough cult following that a remake, as always, was inevitable. While he's crafted a film with an absorbing sense of style, his narrative flow as a story teller is left slightly wanting, and while the film is not quite a case of style over substance, there still seems more emphasis on the style than the substance.
The cast really raise it up a notch, most notably Buric as the head gangster, really filling the screen with a natural air of big hearted warmth under which lurks a psychotic monster. The support cast include Agyness Deyn as Frank's troubled stripper girlfriend, as well as Paul Kaye and Neil Maskell, doing another convincing northern accent. It's short and sweet, as well, but, maybe more short than sweet. ***
Frank (Richard Coyle) is a London drug dealer, whose friend Tony (Bronson Webb) brings him in on a deal that could net him some serious dough. He tries to rope Eastern European crime boss Milo (Zlatko Buric) in on the deal, but things go pear shaped when there is an unexpected police bust and he is forced to dump his stash in a pond. Now in major debt to Milo, Frank finds himself in a desperate race against time to come up with the cash he owes...or else.
Luis Prieto, the man behind the recent hit thriller Drive, here takes Nicolas Winding Refn's cult Danish original from the nineties, and injects it with the same drowned out, moody style, as well as the grim, gory violence he employed with Ryan Gosling. Given the original film's critical raving and cult status, it probably had a big enough cult following that a remake, as always, was inevitable. While he's crafted a film with an absorbing sense of style, his narrative flow as a story teller is left slightly wanting, and while the film is not quite a case of style over substance, there still seems more emphasis on the style than the substance.
The cast really raise it up a notch, most notably Buric as the head gangster, really filling the screen with a natural air of big hearted warmth under which lurks a psychotic monster. The support cast include Agyness Deyn as Frank's troubled stripper girlfriend, as well as Paul Kaye and Neil Maskell, doing another convincing northern accent. It's short and sweet, as well, but, maybe more short than sweet. ***