The Business

"Ow-roit mate. Moi namez Gatah and oima Gangsta. Yow av a laff wiv me and oil punch va shit owta ya"

I hate Guy Ritchie. Not only is he seriously overrated, but he's half responsible for the death of the British film industry. He saved it for a while back in 1998 when he came out with Lock Stock but every other British film since then has been about Gangsters (the other half is rom-com) and it's a sub-genre that very, very, very quickly became boring and has long outstayed it's welcome. It's also highly misrepresentative of Britain as a whole and anyone outside of it should be forgiven for thinking we're all skinhead thugs, or cocaine dealers in suits.

The Business puts a new spin on the formula by setting the action in Spain in the Eighties - like Sexy Beast over half a decade before it. Working mostly with the same bunch of lads he used in the dull Football Factory, as well as a tough guy voice-over, writer/director Nick Love pulls out all the stops signs in giving us an in-ya-face underworld thriller, but forgets to add a plot, or bridge the movie with a cohesive storyline.

Kid Frankie/Frankie Boy (Danny Dyer) runs away to Spain from his council estate in London after he kills his mum's abusive boyfriend. Once there, he hooks up with Charlie, a drug-running playboy and his psychotic partner Sammy and, for a while, lives the life of a king before falling for the wrong girl. You've seen this before when it was called Casino.

The problems start with the fact that there is no real "business." You never feel like their operation is anything more than kids' games. Any serious drug dealer would put a bullet in the back of Sammy's head right away, as he's clearly a liability.

The actual "business" part of the film only lasts 10 minutes and there's no huge insight into what they're doing. You do see them snort truckloads of coke, which is a bit dumb, since dealers shouldn't shit where they eat. Eventually their distrust for one another causes them to disband and they live like bums for a few years before settling it once and for all at the end.

But there are holes everywhere. Instead of a hard-edged, raw look into the lives of fancy crooks, you're left wondering about stuff that is never fully explained. Attempts at being satirical don't work and most of the characters are such arses you don't care about what happens to them. Their own stupidity brings them down.

This film is sold entirely on the fact that it's set in the Eighties and can exploit soundtrack CD marketing opportunities by cramming in as much synthesizer as possible. Some gunplay and killing saves it from being a complete waste of time. Otherwise The Business is none of mine.