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Once again, the Van Toor brothers deal with an important social problem in this engaging and well-written TV series. Far from capitalising on the traditional portrayal of the 'mad professor', they show a retired scientist continually unable to face the world and reality, forcing him to resort to crime. This is a detour from the traditional Van Toor films, where the chief protagonists Bassie and Adriaan take up the egregious Baron. It tones down the traditional dialectism of the series in favour of a far more subtle approach. In the process, we see how the tortured figure of the crying professor slowly falls to pieces and succumbs to his own delusions. But there are many more sides to the story, making this the most sincere of the Van Toor productions.

Ben Kingsley's performance as a psychotic and schizophrenic maniac is what makes this film a truly hair-raising experience. Ray Winstone is equally convincing in his portrayal of a relatively mild-mannered ex-con who has learned the benefits of freedom the hard way through nine years in prison. This is a good film, albeit by no means perfect - I will come to that later. I do think, though, that a lot of people here are missing some points. Logan is not trying, as some seem to think, to pull Gal in for one 'last job', this is more about the inability of criminals to shake the criminal system. Teddy Bass's remark that he will have to visit Gal in Spain is ominous in that respect. This is by no means a Tarantino-style movie, nor does it try to be. There is more realism in one minute of this film than there is in the whole of Pulp Fiction. Also, the tension is maintained much better by the lower pace, and by the sheer discomfort of certain scenes, especially those where they all sit with Don Logan, or where Gal talks with Teddy Bass. Sure, it is never *explicitly* explained why everyone is scared of Logan, but after a couple of minutes that becomes rather obvious: Ben Kingsley is SCARY. Finally about the complaints about the use of English lower-class accents: has anyone on yonder side of the Atlantic ever considered that a southern drawl or Californian highschool-speak can be just as bewildering over here? English comes in a wide range of varieties, and the extremes can be difficult to understand by those people at the other extreme. This is a sacrifice we have to make for realism, I guess. What I didn't get, however, is why Gal was the only possible man to do what looked like a rather unsophisticated bank heist - surely there would be some people in London who would be equally reliable but less expensive and time-consuming to fly in? A last word about the complaints about profanity: what do you expect in a film like this? Wouldn't a film without the F or C word be rather unconvincing? In fact I rather liked the way in which that paradox was satirised by Big Chris in Lock, Stock.