Ray Winstone seems to have made a career for himself playing psycho hard nuts, but there was surprisingly more humanity to his role as Gal in this film, even a tenderness. It was the classical actor Ben Kingsley who had the real nutter role. Both were played admirably even if Kingsley still looked a bit like a librarian despite his short hair cut, tattoos and mockney accent.
Anybody who has seen the excellent 70's movie Villain with Richard Burton will recognise that Ian McShane who had a pretty boy role in that film to Burton's Kray style gangster, gets to ham it up this time as the bad gangster himself. He was quite menacing and the scene with Winstone and James Fox towards the end contained a shocking surprise.
The plot was fairly standard fodder, the retired and Spanish ex-pat gangster Winstone pressed into one last job by his former colleagues. The twist being that the former colleague Kingsley, actually has an ulterior motive.
Add in the always excellent but sadly underused Amanda Redman and a slightly comic turn from Cavan Kendall and you have a stellar British cast.
I got the impression that I was watching a play rather than a film at times and the language will not impress your maiden aunt, but overall it was enjoyable. A few surreal dream sequences mark this film as something more than just the standard swearing, violence and big heist flick.
All in all very enjoyable and worth watching but not a classic.
Anybody who has seen the excellent 70's movie Villain with Richard Burton will recognise that Ian McShane who had a pretty boy role in that film to Burton's Kray style gangster, gets to ham it up this time as the bad gangster himself. He was quite menacing and the scene with Winstone and James Fox towards the end contained a shocking surprise.
The plot was fairly standard fodder, the retired and Spanish ex-pat gangster Winstone pressed into one last job by his former colleagues. The twist being that the former colleague Kingsley, actually has an ulterior motive.
Add in the always excellent but sadly underused Amanda Redman and a slightly comic turn from Cavan Kendall and you have a stellar British cast.
I got the impression that I was watching a play rather than a film at times and the language will not impress your maiden aunt, but overall it was enjoyable. A few surreal dream sequences mark this film as something more than just the standard swearing, violence and big heist flick.
All in all very enjoyable and worth watching but not a classic.