The Sweeney

(2012)
Ray Winstone. Hayley Atwell. A Brit cop story. That was all I knew, and all I needed to know. Apparently The Sweeney was a TV show in the 70s in England, so this is a bit like all those awful remakes that Hollywood has been pushing of the old TV shows from when I was a kid. I dont know if you miss anything not having seen the original show; I didnt feel particularly left out. Winstone is Jack Regan, a hard-as-nails rule-breaker who does everything his own way, but he gets results. His best mate on the force is George Carter (Ben Drew), whos basically the same character but about twenty-five years younger. There are a bunch of other people in this unit of the Flying Squad (a sort of elite police force like they always highlight in the Hong Kong police movies), but the only other one were tasked to care about is Nancy Lewis (Atwell), resident hottie and Jacks lover, even though shes married to internal affairs officer Ivan Lewis (Steven Mackintosh). The Sweenies are looking for a gang of robbers who shot an innocent bystander, and spend most of the film chasing a red herring before getting on the right track. The character subplots are given as much or more time than the main plot Jacks affair, Georges family, Ivan going after Jacks badge, etc. until we have the Unforgivable Event to kick off the third act, and Jack goes completely off the rails and starts beating up every crook in sight. Then theres a long finale with lots of gunplay and car crashes, and somewhere in the middle of the second act I lamented that The Sweeney felt like every mediocre cop film thats come out of Hollywood in the last thirty years. Yeah, its set in London, and the accents can occasionally baffle attempts at comprehension of the dialogue, but this feels like a by-the-numbers Michael Bay type of thing, following an expected set of circumstances and character motivations until the officers are forced to turn vigilantes to express the American expectation that law and justice are two different things. I have no idea if the movie hews close to the show, if it captures the feel, or if the re-casting is any good whatsoever. Winstone is effective here, but playing a blunt bruiser is second nature to him, so Id expect that. Drew, who is apparently a rapper, was chosen after several higher-profile actors proved unwilling or unavailable, but he has enough screen presence to be interesting. Atwell I was disappointed in shes fine, but she demonstrated in Captain America that she can light up the screen, and here shes just the hot chick with no personality. They could have gotten any attractive woman to play this role. I tend to like British procedurals because they are usually more intelligently made than the ones over here, and the writing tends to be a bit sharper and more nuanced. But thats not the case here; it very much seems like The Sweeney wants to be a loud, dumb Hollywood movie, and in that aspiration it succeeds marvelously. Aside from really liking one of the leads, theres no real reason to sit through this.

You can catch many American films that do what this does better, and you can find any of a number of Brit shows who do what this should have done. This youve seen before, and better. May 6, 2013