Completely unconvincing comic book violence trivialising the life,death and crimes of three distinctly frightening but small-time cons from the East London/Essex borderlands.The Rettendon Range Rover murders have proved a cash cow for crime writers,ex-villains,grasses and their ilk for some years,with rumour and counter-rumour circulating from the outer reaches of the Metropolitan Police District to Southend itself. Did The Bill get the right geezers for it?Did one of them,a registered police informant,tell his handler it was all going off and then get the order to go ahead with it anyway? Were they shot elsewhere and driven out into the country?Was the vehicle loaded with drugs that swiftly vanished before the photographers got there?Well,I don't know,and ,frankly,I don't care.It's a high-risk trade,you want low-risk take up basket weaving. Mr Sean Bean plays a crim who's so ludicrously and obviously a total nutter that,in real life,nobody would ever work with him.He'd be quietly "disappeared" to sighs of relief all round. Miss Alex Kingston as his lady is marginally better than Penelope Keith would have been - but only marginally.Her attempts at Estuary English are,frankly,embarrassing. The police - pawns in Miss Kingston's grand design - are either corrupt or grossly incompetent,an irrelevance in the serious business of importing and distributing illegal drugs. Mr Bean's character speaks appallingly,has a poor vocabulary and has trouble relating positively to women.I can only assume he skipped the "Anger Management" classes during his last spell of bird. However,having said all those nasty things about him I still can't believe even a complete knobhead would allow Miss Kingston to blindside him.Perhaps he was dazzled by her brilliant conversation,her grasp of Proustian philosophy? Whatever,it fails to add verisimilitude to an account of dubious veracity. Surely with "Essex Boys" the seam of Britcrim movies has been well and truly mined out,if not can "Buckinghamshire Boys" be far behind?
Review of Essex Boys
