The Business

The latest lads flick from Nick Love promises a lairy cocktail of birds, booze and drug busts on the Costa del Sol. Set in the gaudy Eighties, the movie follows wide-eyed Frankie (Danny Dyer from Human Traffic), on the run after bludgeoning his mother's abusive boyfriend to death.

Arriving in Malaga, he falls in with drug baron and playboy Charlie (Tamer Hassan). In Charlie's gang, Frankie can fill his boots with sun, sea and sex, dressed all the while like an extra from Club Tropicana. But the dream turns sour when they get on the wrong side of the local mayor.

For Love, The Business was always a nostalgia trip. He openly admits it's a "me-film", but ironically, has failed to inject the same sense of individuality he managed in last year's The Football Factory. Saddled with dreary characterisations, it is a ham-fisted attempt at a slick gangster movie. All the stereotypes are out in force - suave, paternalistic gang boss, viciously sadistic right-hand man and naive new kid on the block. The female characters, meanwhile, are even weaker. Principal love interest Carly (former model Georgina Chapman) pouts seductively for 90 minutes and when she does finally get a decent line, she winds up unconscious. Indeed, it's jarring that the reason for our hero's initial flight from South London (avenging domestic violence) should end with him gleefully beating the defenseless Carly in a car. Elsewhere, lingering shots of other women being abused add nothing to the film.

Another major problem is its setting. With carte blanche to revive the sartorial self-harm that was the Eighties, Love's characters swagger around in Sergio Tacchini tracksuits against a soundtrack of Blondie, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Spandau Ballet et al. This era, however, is hardly unchartered waters. Anyone who has stepped into East London in the last five years - and you suspect Love has - will know it's alive and well, bobby socks and all. Sure, it's funny to see an outsized mobile phone crop up, but don't expect people to take you too seriously. That knowing, self-referential style works best in parody (viz the new Starsky & Hutch), not in brutal gangster movies. As for the music, a proliferation of syncopated drumbeats doesn't make up for the paucity of decent dialogue.

The film's only saving grace is Dyer. With scant refuge in script, or direction, he succeeds in conjuring up a credible, almost pitiable Frankie. His is the only character that doesn't lapse into stereotype and about whom you genuinely care, which makes Love's sloppy ending all the more disappointing.

The Business will no doubt be touted as another Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. But the newest gangland Britflick lacks the sophistication of its predecessor. This clumsy pastiche may please its creator, but the difficulty with any "me-film" is that you're only guaranteed an audience of one.