This isnt an easy one to comment on, because I liked some of it immensly and other bits werent so good. Jason Statham plays a rogue cop on the streets of South East London, which apparently is just one police station covering the whole area.He has a reputation as a hard case and using violence when not necessarily required. The film starts with Stathams character laying waste to some ioks trying to steal his car, what follows is a small montage of newspaper headlines about his outragous treatment of innocent young men and the public outcry over his actions, its not as bad start and you get the feeling it could be a good story.
The cast in this film is mixed quality wise, I guess they didnt want a larry olivier performance going up against Mr Statham, as he’s good at what he does but acting isnt really what he does, Paddy Considine is decent as the totally irrelevantly gay senior officer who has a bromance with Statham whilst they crack on with the case, and David Morrisey is his usual functional self, even if he is a bit of wanker in this one. The whole idea of the cop killer goading the police and using the press as his sucker punch is good and if they had followed only this line of the story I think it would have been a better film for it. The relatively pointless sub stories and characters may have worked in a novel but in this theyn detract from the plot and dont even add any humour to the mix. The portayal of London police is far from The Bill or anything approaching reality and indeed the picture they paint of South East London isnt too accurate, chavs, junkies and hoodies punctuated by drug dealers and scumbags.
In the end this film lives or dies by the ability to look past the annoying stuff and just enjoying the casual violence and gallows humour that Statham brings to the table, the killer, Blitz is quite funny, not intentionally im guessing but his character does work all the same, his modern take on the serial killers is amusing because it may well be true of those out there now, smart to the system and savvy about the facebook generation. The end is not very satisfying but its ties up a few of the loose ends, although there are so many different things going on you couldnt possibly have tied them all up without causing serious numb bum for the audience. In short I wouldnt say this is a bad film its just not very good.
bigsteveg 