The Business

From the director and producers of The Football Factory, comes The Business a crime caper about the exploits of the aging 1960’s bank robbers who fled from the UK to Spain, to clean up as ex-pats on the Costa Del Crime. It’s set in the Thatcher era of the 80's with the glitz, the glamour, the wide lapels, the flowery cocktails and garish shirts of the get-rich-quick cockney gangster set populated most decoratively in films like Sexy Beast and The Sweeney II.

A bond grows between two men - self-made criminal, the sauve playboy Charlie (Hassan) and his new young prodigy Frankie (Dyer) who is fleeing difficulties in London. Its great fun whilst they’re sampling the high life together and Frankie is learning the trade. Swiftly into the equation though, comes Charlie’s hard-as-nails ginger-haired ex-pat friend Sammy (Geoff Bell). Sammy and Charlie go back a long way, so the dynamics are different with Frankie on the scene. Tensions get even worse with Sammy’s tasty girlfriend Carly (Georgina Chapman) cavorting about the joint in her bikini on the scene and that tension is bound to spill over in some way or other.

The Business follows a similar pattern to the film Blow hitting the high points in a drug-trafficking business before a grim reality hits those involved. It slightly loses its way and a cleverer ending was potentially there but not put up on screen but overall this is a fairly polished Brit thriller which will be loved by anyone who enjoyed things like The Sweeney or The Krays, its that sort of ex-pat world really and well captured by director Nick Love.

Matt Arnoldi