Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson brings all the lack of charisma that saw him through his awful excursions into video game territory to Alex De Rakoff’s dodgy gangsta thriller with less than successful results.
Seemingly arriving 15 years too late, Rakoff appears to be hunting for parallel lines between English and US gangster flicks, but unfortunately for him – there aren’t any. Stateside, it’s all about belonging to a family. In the UK? Well according to the movies, it’s generally about making some extra cash while wearing a camel-coat.
On the plus side, he’s been gifted with a truly mind-boggling casting director, who’s seen fit to put Fiddy up against Danny DeVito, then shoehorn in Danny Dyer and..erm..Brenda Blethyn.
The well-dodgy plot sees a couple of wide-boy travel agents (Dyer and a hard-working Tamer Hassan) trying to raise £100,000 in 24 hours to satisfy Jackson’s crime boss. While there’s plenty of overly-ripe mockerney shouting to entertain, the whole thing wobbles along on it’s already unsteady wheels, and isn’t served by travelling a road chock full of plot holes.
When Jackson is on screen, this is laughable rubbish, when he’s off it’s likeable enough nonsense that may have served better as an hour long TV special, Dyer too ridiculous to take entirely seriously, Fiddy too unspeakably craptabulous to know he’s the worst thing in a movie that’s hardly Citizen Kane to begin with.
This will happily pass a hour and a half on a wet Sunday afternoon but don’t expect any real insight into the culture- although it does leave the field wide open for a sequel exploring exactly who would buy a holiday from Danny Dyer.
