Riot

Another movie designed to get the London Tourist Bureau running for the hills. it is supposedly set during the big riots we experienced three years ago. In reality though, only the final scenes touch upon that major incident. Instead, we follow the life of a former hooligan now turned cop, and his attempts to juggle his new job with his old loutish friends, who either see him as a sell out, or a person who they can extract favours from.

There are about as many surprises here as finding a plastic toy in a Kinder Egg, as our anti-hero experiences the predictable dual pressures of dealing with human trash on the beat, and even worse garbage in the form of his 'mates' off it. How any right minded person would want to spend five seconds in the company of his former buddies I don't know, but at least he's making a bit of an effort to get away from them.

They are many, many breaks in the action to inform us that one scene took place ONE WEEK AGO, ONE HOUR AGO etc. You can tell it's trying to pretend it's telling a complex story, but this mediocre script is clearly nothing of the sort. Delusions of grandeur, perhaps. It's watchable, it's efficient, but aside from a rather upsetting sequence involving a serious assault on a female officer, there's little here to stir the imagination.

Even the Downer Ending has been done to death in this genre. As soon as our rogue lawman gets that look in his eyes, there's only one possible conclusion. So... file under 'average'. 5/10