DVD Reviews

The Business

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Danny Dyer
• Details: UK, 97 mins, 18s.

Garishly shot (intentionally no doubt) The Business is a lazy, cliched affair, shot in flashback sequence, and clearly heavily influenced by Guy Ritchie. Danny Dyer is miscast as young Frankie. He leaves depressing Thatcher-era British poverty and his mother - abused by his father - for a life of crime in Spain. After some basic drug donkey work Frankie is quickly seduced by the fast lifestyle, easy money and loose women on the Costa del Crime. With plenty of Ray Winstone 'ard-man impersonations, and not a whiff of the man of himself, The Business is a crude affair in which even the narration has no conviction. There is a reason reviewers tend to say 'it's been done before, and done better' - mainly because it is a indolent and inoffensive way of telling the truth. The Business is a stylised take on a dozen stylized films (The Italian Job, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Layer Cake) and, apart from the soundtrack, not a very good one.

Review by Elaine Reilly