Truly Dreadful Film

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

"Essex Boys" is a 1999 "gangster" film that takes us into the gritty, dangerous domain of Essex's drug-dealing underworld. The story is narrated in part by a lad named Billy, a lowly (but fairly quick-witted) driver for the self-important kingpins, and though we don't see everything from Billy's vantage point, it is an effective and engaging means of presenting the story. Though the characters and the story are pure fiction, the inspiration for the film came from the murder of three suspected drug dealers whose bodies were found in a Range Rover in Essex in 1995. The story created around this real-life event is highly imaginative, plausible, gripping, and suspenseful. Death and imprisonment lurk in the shadows, and the 'firm' are certainly ruthless and reckless, but in "Essex Boys", the 'firm' never appear quite as menacing as the filmmakers would like. Larry Lamb riding round in a Merc' smoking a cigar accompanied by a long haired Michael McKell and a scenery chewing Sean Bean just doesn't seem true to the realities of top (ok, upper middle) level criminality. But then, most of us wouldn't really know.The plot revolves around double crossings and drug deals gone wrong, with some romantic intrigue (Alex Kingston on mesmeric form) thrown in for good measure. This is all well and good, if you can follow the plot, but the film's main strengths are - in order of successful execution - atmosphere and acting. This is a world of strip light underpasses flashing by in the early hours, of rendezvous by the estuarine bridge, in the shadow of the oil refinery. Essex has never looked so bleak. Bean, Kingston, Creed miles etc. certainly give it their all, and the acting is strong and committed. Bean's accent is not perfect, but this doesn't detract from the overall success of the film. This is a gritty, violent film that doesn't hold back any punches in its depiction of the drug underworld. It's a good story with a very satisfying ending. It's a first-rate production and is consummately acted by all involved. Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

"Essex Boys" is a movie that starts in entirely familiar territory, and then abruptly shifts gears in the final act to give us twists that were unexpected and perhaps even incongruous. It's enough to make me wonder if some kind of jiggery pokery happened behind the scenes to the effect of: one writer was fired and another hired, or producers gave the screenwriter(s) carte blanche at the zero hour to branch off in an unfamiliar direction.The beginning is about a young man who gets involved with a criminal gang. One of its members, a psychopath played by Sean Bean, has just got out of gaol. "Billy Whizz", as they call the young man, impresses his new cronies but you know sooner or later it's going to be a tale of "you play with fire, you get burnt". I wasn't paying that much attention to these parts, to be honest. We've seen it all before, and it certainly offers nothing new.And then there's the gear change, with a truly surprising revelation, and the movie gets much darker, not only in dramatic tone, but in colour: most of the last part of the movie is shot at night. It ends with more twists that are impressive in the way they are thought out, if not entirely in the way they are implemented. The beginning and end feel like different movies; I would have liked to see the proper beginning and middle for the final act, rather than the impostors we ended up with.

This abrasive British gangster movie set in Essex, a county due east of London, thrives on double-crosses galore. None of the underworld characters are role models, much less noble individuals, and they live to ascend to the top of their rackets over anybody's dead body. No, the English accents are not thatthick, but you may find it difficult to make it through this thoroughly unsavory crime thriller. Everybody is prepared to kill, kill, kill and the rugged life of British mobsters is short-lived. Incidentally, the British police loiter on the edges of the action. Ostensibly, the story is told by an enterprising but harmless cabdriver named Billy Reynolds (Charlie Creed-Miles) who gets mixed with with ex-convicts Jason Locke (Sean Bean of "GoldenEye") and John Dyke (Tom Wilkinson of "Rush Hour") who operate in the cutthroat narcotics smuggling business. They specialize in Ecstacy, or what they refer to as 'spotted pills' and a bad shipment threatens to undo the partnership between Locke and Dyke. Locke mistreats his wife, Lisa Locke (Alex Kingston of NBC-TV's "ER")with casual abandon and openly has sex with any tart to whom he takes a fancy. When she catches him giving it to another woman, she goes ballistic and howls about how she maintained her loyality to him by abstaining from sex during the five years he spent in prison. He reminds her that he does as it likes and them publicly humiliates her and sends her groveling to her knees in front of everybody. As we learn later on, Lisa is a woman not to be scorned.Director Terry Winsor and scenarist Jeff Pope based this 102-minute, R-rated thriller on the notorious Rettendon Range Rover Murders," where authorities discovered three gangsters gunned down and left for dead shot in a Range Rover during one snowy evening. Billy proves his worth as a driver and Dyke loans him to loose cannon hood Jason Locke who has no qualms about throwing people out of windows or strangling uncooperative girls that refuse to let him have his way with them. Action develops gradually with less characters winning in the end over the crazed Locke. Winsor handles things nicely enough and the ending is truly a revelation along with Alex Kingston's role as Locke's wife. Not as charismatic as "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" or for that matter any of the other Guy Ritchie crime melodramas. Humor is singularly lacking in this no-nonsense outing. The moral is obvious: do not associate with shady characters who use guns to settle their arguments and are forever paranoid about witnesses to the massacres they have seen.

If you want to "see" what a drug induced blank look really looks like Sean Bean's bedroom scene half way through the movie is a must see. He ain't trying to look good or mean or anything other then just be in the character. And he does that to the exclusion of the rest of the world. He's a git and he will make your skin crawl.This an an ensemble cast and they fit together wonderfully. The ways they come together and come apart are believable. You may even feel compassion for some of them until you remember what everyone is doing.At the end of viewing it I thought it was a once through but now a few days later I want to see it again and I am thinking seriously about buying th DVD.