The Business

Opening in the middle of things with a frantic, violent scene accompanied by a tough guy voice-over, it's immediately apparent that Nick Love's The Business aspires to do a Goodfellas of the 1980s Costa Del Crime scene.

Backtracking to establish who these guys are and who is speaking, we are introduced to Frankie, our on-off narrator in the Ray Liotta mode.

The difference is that Frankie's life of crime is more the result of happenstance than intentionality. It wasn't so much that he "had always wanted to be a gangster" than that, having whacked his mum's no-good boyfriend with a piece of two-by-four, things in Peckham get a little hot and a trip to Spain decidedly appealing.

Frankie is assigned to take some cash to bank robber on the run Charlie AKA The Playboy. He takes a liking to Frankie, who he rechristens Kid Frankie - everyone in a film like this has to have a nickname - and brings him on board as a chaffeur and general dogsbody.

Unfortunately Charlie's partner-in-crime, the psychotic Sammie - who, continuing the analogy would be the Joe Pesci equivalent character but for the fact he's also something of the brains of the operation - takes an immediate dislike to Frankie.

Still, after Frankie makes a good showing as the gang deals with some rival Dutch drugs traffickers and takes over their marijuana smuggling operation, everything is okay.

All they have to do is keep the mayor sweet with kickbacks and never get involved in cocaine trafficking. So, what do you think they then start to do?

Up to this point The Business emerges as a reasonably successful example of the contemporary British gangster film, benefitting from strong if one-note performances and an overall look and feel that, if something of a triumph of style over substance, at least could be said to be mirroring its 1980s setting in this.

But then the narrative then pretty much falls to pieces as a "six months later" title reintroduces the opening sequence without explaining what went down in between.

Perhaps a case could be made for this as mirroring the disintegration of its protagonists' lives - "never get high on your own supply" and all that - but, in truth, it feels more like the work of a filmmaker making the elementary mistake of neglecting story - an entire act feels missing - and character in the belief that period minutiae will do.

In the end, despite the Goodfellas-isms - a general attitude of misogyny would be another one - The Business emerges as yet another British gangster film with nothing new or original to say.