St. George’s Day (18) 104 mins *
Frank
Harper, the burly, charismatic character actor familiar from The Football Factory and Shane Meadows’
earlier films, sorely overstretches himself in co-writing and directing this
unreconstructed – actually, scarcely constructed – ladfest, which sees him
calling in favours from the stars of every homegrown crime caper of the past 15
years. Those mugs paying to see it in cinemas should be issued with an I-Spy Book of Two-Bob British Gangster Faces
to tick off: it’d be more involving than anything in St. George’s Day itself.
Amid an
insanely tangled, cooked-up-in-the-boozer plot – cobbling together lost drugs,
angry Russians, hooligans, dollybirds, diamonds smuggled in sex toys and, of
course, lap-dancing clubs – there’s a perverse enjoyment to be found in seeing
Harper and Craig Fairbrass, as bristling cousins, re-enacting the
Michael-and-Fredo business from The
Godfather on a Tesco Value budget. Still, you’d be happier if the goons and
uglymugs reasserting England’s glory over the Dimitri-come-latelies of Eastern
Europe didn’t look and sound quite so much like English Defence League
canvassers. Jog on, everybody. Jog on.
St. George's Day opens in selected cinemas today.
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