Here in the United States people usually foam at the mouth whenever a classic television series is remade as a (usually terrible) movie. There have been dozens of examples in the last decade alone. However, I don’t know how Brits feel about The Sweeney, a big screen remake of a popular crime series that ran from 1975 to 1978 about the Flying Squad, a branch of the London police that dealt with major crimes. Like most Americans (I assume), I’m encountering the film version with no knowledge of the television series, so I hope our British readers will forgive me for my lack of knowledge regarding the original series!
Jack Regan (Ray Winstone) is the leader of Flying Squad, nicknamed “The Sweeney,” known for their “shoot-first and ask questions later” style. While they get extraordinary results, Detective Chief Inspector Ivan Lewis (Steven Mackintosh) from Internal Affairs is unhappy with the amount of lawsuits the group faces because of their rough tactics. However, Lewis’ wife, Flying Squad officer Nancy Lewis (Hayley Atwell) feels otherwise because she has been carrying on a passionate affair with Regan. But Regan’s bare-knuckle and freewheeling ways hit a roadblock when a civilian dies in a jewelry robbery and Regan’s usually concrete instincts turn up empty when he pursues old enemy Francis Allen (Paul Anderson) as the culprit of the crime. The crime turns out to be a deeply-rooted conspiracy that is a lot more complicated than that, and it seems that the only person Regan can count on is his right-hand man Detective Constable George Carter (Ben Drew).
My biggest issue with The Sweeney is that for a nearly two-hour action movie, there are surprisingly few action sequences. The few that are here are excellent if you can ignore the sometimes awful gunshot effects. The lengthy talking sequences don’t hit very hard because Winstone is not a leading man, he’s a leading muscle — not just because of his age or looks, but because I imagine even for English audiences his gruff mumble is hard to understand. The plot is full with twists and turns and Regan follows a full character arc from top of the world to the bottom of the barrel, but Winstone’s Regan is no Daniel Craig James Bond. Sure, it’s unfair to compare The Sweeney to Skyfall (The Sweeney‘s budget is literally a small fraction of Skyfall‘s budget), but it makes little sense for writer/director Nick Love to put Winstone’s character through a similar story arc. There has to be a more interesting approach for a London-based police flick besides the completely tired “renegade cop goes over the line” arc.
Yet at that same time The Sweeney isn’t a throwaway. Again, the few action sequences are excellent, and Winstone is still the tough-as-nails bonecrusher that he usually is. The question is whether or not you want to see him sex up Hayley Atwell and hear him have long dialogue sequences. Because of that, The Sweeney doesn’t play to his strengths and falls more in line with its television origins than movie storytelling. Still, watching Winstone punch people in the face is always entertaining, so The Sweeney has a solid foundation.
The Disc
I’ve complained about the lack of features on a number of Entertainment One’s recent releases, but The Sweeney is a complete 180 difference from those bare-bones discs. That’s because The Sweeney Blu-ray is overflowing with features, and the same bountiful features are also on the DVD.
Audio Commentary — The commentary features writer/director Nick Love and the producers. It’s as informative as most commentaries, but also goes in-depth into figuring out how to do a film adaptation of a popular television series from several decades ago.
Behind the Scenes of The Sweeney — a 26 minute in-depth look into the production of the film primarily focusing on how Love and his producers stretched the production budget in order to get such big-budget looking sequences (which also suggests why there aren’t many of those sequences). It also covers the training the cast had to undergo in order to appear legitimately tough. Very thorough as far as these things go.
Preparing The Sweeney — A 15 minute feature explaining the origins of the project from the initial proposal onward, including how important it was to Love to get Ray Winstone as the lead and how the rest of the cast was selected. This was pretty interesting from the perspective of what goes through the heads of people trying to remake a project.
Shooting in Trafalgar Square — This 15 minute feature focuses on the film’s best action sequence, the gunfight in Trafalgar Square. Love reveals that it took nearly a year to plan the whole sequence and had only six hours to shoot the exterior sequence.
The New Regan and Carter — A quick four minute look at the relationship between the Regan and Carter characters, who were the leads on the original series. The relationship between the two is much different in the new movie, especially since Ray Winstone is much older than Ben Drew.
On The Shooting Range — This four and a half minute feature looks at the weapons training that the cast underwent for the film.
Top Gear and the Caravan Park — Covering the movie’s other great action sequence in the film (a car chase in a trailer park), this eight and a half minute feature explains how the sequence was also filmed for the British television series Top Gear. The film crew compliments the expertise provided by the Top Gear crew, which definitely contributed to the awesomeness of the sequence.
Animated Storyboards — As you’d expect, this features the two key action sequences (Trafalgar Square and Caravan Park) is storyboard form. However, the term “storyboard” is a misnomer because instead of comic strip-like drawings the “storyboard” is a computer animated replica. In the case of Traflagar Square, the production needed to do this in order to get approval to film the sequence. These are very cool and show how films are made differently today.
Movie Rating: A reliable renegade cop movie that has Ray Winstone in a great performance (5.5/10).
Disc Rating: Entertainment One has outdid itself with features galore (8.5/10).
The Sweeney is now available on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo pack.
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