Having earlier this year demonstrated his aptitude for breezy comedy – nil – in ‘Run For Your Wife’, Danny Dyer is back on familiar ’ardman turf in this cement-headed vigilante thriller. And he’s returned in a pensive mood: he sports a distinguished beard, for starters, and spouts such wisdom as, ‘Sorry is a castaway word on the breath of the hopefuls who have gone too far to right their wrongs.’ Is Britfilm’s grimiest geezer growing up? Don’t be daft.
A virtual remake, down to the final shot, of Michael Winner’s 1974 exploitation hit ‘Death Wish’ – and lacking even that film’s adolescent grasp of street justice – the film casts Dyer as a Royal Marine discharged from Afghanistan, who puts his advanced execution skills to methodical use when his parents are slain by a quintet of East End gangsters. The police? Pah. Reprehensibly reactionary politics are the order of the day, as our man is sainted for his self-defeatingly grisly defence of British morals: ‘The riots were just the beginning,’ he warns darkly. Cheers, Dan.