A chapter is closed on the Cockney gangster genre with this elegiac movie from the writers and stars of Sexy Beast. Ray Winstone has never been better as Colin Diamond, a fearsome geezer and used-car salesman whose life is undone when his wife Liz (Joanne Whalley) leaves him for a handsome French waiter, simply called Loverboy (Melvil Poupaud). Colin, however, has four grizzly gangster buddies (including stalwarts such as John Hurt and Ian McShane) who kidnap Loverboy and lock him in a decrepit London safe house, where the heartbroken Colin can enjoy his inevitable revenge.
Thus the film, unfolding mostly as a one-room play with Winstone at its centre, has much to say about ageing gangsters — and does so, be warned, from within a relentless torrent of “c” words. And yet, tough only on the outside, the movie is literate and witty, and dismissive of macho theatrics. Typically, it climaxes with a speech, again from Winstone, about the “nitty gritty” that maintains a happy marriage. So, not very Guy Ritchie. But in a good way.
18 (95min)